


Sometimes the Truth Is Stranger than Fiction

by dramaturgicallycorrect



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bakery, M/M, Taxes, lots of swearing, stranger than fiction AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-27
Updated: 2014-10-04
Packaged: 2018-02-10 17:10:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 54,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2033172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dramaturgicallycorrect/pseuds/dramaturgicallycorrect
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn Malik stares at the blank page and the blank page stares back. And judges. Because Zayn has nothing.<br/>Fuck, he thinks, so he clacks it out on the typewriter he uses out of spite and the word stains the page with small, satisfying little Courier New letters.<br/><i> fuck !! </i><br/>Zayn sighs and closes his eyes, massaging his forehead and pulling up the image that has been haunting him for weeks.<br/>Tall, lanky, gangly, almost too thin to exist. Perpetual, generous smile and a firm handshake. Friend to everyone and friends with no one. Open face, greener than green eyes. Bed hair sky high, curly, impossible. Work hair tame, plastered, parted sensibly. Aggressively loves humanity, but too afraid of letting the world break his heart.<br/>Zayn blinks his eyes clear and presses return a couple of times, not bothering with the expletive.<br/><i>This is a story about a man called Harold Styles. And his wristwatch. </i><br/>--<br/>Or a Stranger Than Fiction AU where Zayn has writer's block. Perrie's here to help. Harry is a character in a story, which is strange because he's definitely a real person. Louis refuses to be audited. Liam dispenses sage literary advice. And Niall wants to be a rock star.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a Stranger Than Fiction AU that adheres very closely to the structure of Stranger Than Fiction (until it doesn't). There are times where I lovingly (and poorly) paraphrased and/or lines directly from the script, which was written by Zach Helm. Sorry, Zach Helm. I am happy to point out which ones. It's mostly the bits about taxes.
> 
> I am eternally forever and forever super grateful of my most excellent beta, who has encouraged me from the very first word, been the very best cheerleader, allowed me to shout about my own frustrations, indulged my Harry Stories, laughed at my terrible jokes, and dispensed sage literary advice.
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing, I know nothing, this means nothing, literary license is utilized liberally with real people. I claim ignorance of anything to do with London or British politics or the HMRC or really anything outside of the light googling that I tried to make sense of. And any and all tax discussion is generally just borrowed from the script.
> 
> The title of this fic is taken from the song "Stranger than Fiction" by Bad Religion, which is not a song I would necessarily apply to this fic, but there you have it.

Zayn Malik stares at the blank page and the blank page stares back. And judges. Because Zayn has nothing.

Fuck, he thinks, so he clacks it out on the typewriter he uses out of spite (his editor complains about the lack of digital files) and the word stains the page with small, satisfying little Courier New letters.

_fuck !!_

Zayn sighs and closes his eyes, massaging his forehead and pulling up the image that has been haunting him for weeks.

Tall, lanky, gangly, almost too thin to exist. Perpetual, generous smile and a firm handshake. Friend to everyone and friends with no one. Open face, greener than green eyes. Bed hair sky high, curly, impossible. Work hair tame, plastered, parted sensibly. Aggressively loves humanity, but too afraid of letting the world break his heart.

Zayn blinks his eyes clear and presses return a couple of times, not bothering with the expletive.

 _Death and Taxes_ , he types. Return, return.

 

_This is a story about a man called Harold Styles. And his wristwatch._

_His wristwatch was elegant, yet understated, functional, but still classy. On his best days, Harold Styles tried to be like his wristwatch, and, even on his best days, he failed._

_Harold lived and breathed by the tempo of his wristwatch, which was admittedly digital, but Harold liked to believe he could hear the soft, dependable ticks of the seconds as they passed him by._

_Harold lived like that, measuring life in dependable ticks of seconds, finding solace in them more often than he found despair._

_Harold’s wristwatch was the conductor of the orchestra of Harold’s life. His wristwatch tired of playing the same song day in and day out, but said nothing._

_The movements consisted of Harold awakening promptly at 7.15 every morning to the steady_ dee-dee-dee-deet _of his wristwatch in rapid eighth notes. Turning off the alarm after the third repetition, he rolled out of bed and studied himself in the bathroom mirror before starting his routine._

_He brushed his teeth thirty-two times up and down, thirty-two times side to side, each at the loving tempo of 152._

_He brushed at his hair and plastered it into something vaguely respectable and manageable. The pull-pull-comb of the knotted mess shifted him into a nice waltz. It took exactly thirty-nine repetitions of this action to complete the job._

_He dressed in a simple grey suit, topped off every day by a bowtie of tasteful color. Harold didn’t know why he chose a bowtie over a necktie, which is what every other coworker he had wore. His wristwatch knew why. Harold thought the bowtie made him look like a symphony conductor. His wristwatch thought it made him look like a twat._

_And who was Harold kidding. His wristwatch was very obviously the conductor._

_Harold left his house at precisely 8.11 every morning to jog down the street to just barely catch the 8.17 Number 88 bus to Camden Town. Banana in one hand, briefcase in another, his long legs bounced him along at a steady tempo, his feet the percussion, the wind the woodwinds, the car horns the brass. The trip to the bus stop was accomplished in 864 steps. He passed the same groups of people every morning, oblivious neighbors, running children, hurrying commuters. He flashed a smile to each person he found eye contact with but was rarely treated one in return._

_He traveled the half-hour ride, exiting at the Parliament Square stop at precisely 8.49. He climbed the steps to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, where he spent his days as an auditor. He made his morning tea in the break room, ate his banana, and sat in his seat, ready to face the day, by 8.58. His computer took 107 seconds to boot up._

_Harold spent his lunch breaks alone, outside, on a bench just a few blocks away so twice a day, he could walk by and admire the sea foam green Fender electric guitar that taunted him from the window of the music shop._

_Harold didn’t have friends at work, but he had Niall Horan, because everybody had Niall Horan, because that’s the kind of person Niall Horan was. As quick to give an open smile and firm handshake as Harold was, but somehow brighter. They greeted each other and spoke amicably and parted to their separate cubicles. It never occurred to Harold that their relationship could be anything greater._

_Harold was stopped by his co-workers at least once a day to provide an answer to a mathematics equation, and it felt nice to be known for something in the office. Harold Styles, the human calculator._

_“What’s 4,569 times 49?” they said._

_“223,881,” he said after just a moment’s thought._

_“Thanks, mate. How ‘bout a song as well, then, Kylie?”_

_He was also known by others for his habit of singing to himself as he crunched numbers at his desk. He didn’t realize he did it and nobody was ever inclined to point it out to him until it was too late and the snickering was too loud to ignore._

_From 9.00 to 17.00, the music of the office serenaded Harold Styles. Music was easy, safe, logical, even when he didn’t know the song. Music was not safe for life, however. Math was easy, safe, logical, musical even. Certainly a constant and certainly a far more practical career trajectory. He liked numbers almost as much as he liked music._

_This was how Harold and his wristwatch ended up at the HMRC, Harold as the most efficient auditor in the office and his wristwatch as the most efficient time piece in the office._

_Both of these claims to efficiency held true until this Tuesday morning. Which was when Harold’s wristwatch changed everything._

\--

Harry Styles likes routine. He likes the feeling of the familiar and never worrying about the unknown. This is what he’s told himself again and again year after year until he believed beyond doubt that it was true. Until he no longer longed for things he couldn’t have or thought about what life would be like if it was different.

Harry is good where he is. It’s a good life. So long as he sticks to his routine.

He leaves himself exactly fifty-six minutes to get ready in the morning, a plan he has worked down to the minute because six years of the same routine allows for maximum efficiency. The trial and error period was long and consisted of many tragically early mornings and shamefully late mornings until the perfect use of time was constructed through the joint efforts of Harry and his wristwatch.

Harry’s wristwatch is his partner in crime, his partner in efficiency. The wristwatch was a gift from his parents on his first day of university, a reminder of all the expectations he is meant to fulfill. So far, he is doing well fulfilling all expectations.

He uses these fifty-six minutes to make himself into what he considers is a respectable human being. A respectable human being observes good hygiene, tames their unruly mass of curly hair, and dresses with modesty. His pants are pressed and his bowties are tied immaculately. He has a reputation to uphold and he takes his responsibility seriously.

Harry is the youngest senior auditor with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and he is very proud of this fact.  He specializes in small businesses and his least favorite part is the actual act of auditing. He likes to analyze and he likes to advise and he likes to interact. He doesn’t like to censure or meet people on their worst days. That’s always what it ends up being, their worst days.

Some of them yell, but most of them seethe. None of them smile and none of them understand. Harry audits them because it’s part of his job and on some level, the auditees have done something wrong. Sometimes it’s intentional, but most times it’s honest mistakes that compound over years of not knowing better. He likes the honest mistakes best because he likes to help. Working for the HMRC is as much about helping people learn as it is about serving his government.

When he’s not in the field performing an audit, he’s in the office, his second home. He thinks he navigates the office easily enough, trading quick smiles and greeting every person by name. He is generous with his wishes for good mornings and good afternoons that are returned back to him at an average rate of 44%.

From his desk, he can hear but not see the seemingly constant chatter that emanates from the break room. There are always people in the break room—Harry wonders when they have time to work—and he never thinks to join. The office is an ecosystem with alliances already made, and Harry dares not to interrupt without an invitation. So far the invitation has yet to come.

Niall Horan, an Irish fireball all rolled up into a human being, is the only person who initiates conversation with Harry and Harry likes this very much.

“Good morning, Harry,” he chirps whenever he sees Harry first in the break room as Harry takes his morning tea and banana.

“Good morning, Niall,” Harry responds with a smile.

“And how are you this fine morning?” Niall would rather sit on a table than in a chair, it seems, because every morning they trade their usual sentences, he never takes a chair.

“I am well, thank you. How are you doing?”

“Not a single complaint.”

“I’m glad,” Harry says, standing up to return to his desk. “Have a great day.”

“All right, Harry,” Niall says with a laugh as Harry exits and Harry celebrates the successful, if not fairly generic, interaction.

Harry takes his lunches alone on his favorite bench where he can melt into the anonymity of London. Some days he takes his current knitting project to work should he finish eating early. He rarely gets to the needles, having timed his lunch period down to as much perfection as the rest of the day.

Nine and a half minutes roundtrip to walk to the bench. Two minutes of staring at the sea foam green Fender Stratocaster electric guitar in the music shop window on his way to the bench. Twenty-seven minutes of thoughtfully and meticulously finishing his lunch. Two minutes of telling himself experiencing longing for things he doesn’t need is not practical on the way back from the bench.

The rest of the day is spent calculating things into his computer or being shouted at over the phone by taxpayers or politely answering coworkers’ questions.

He tries not to take it home with him. He imagines leaving the stress and the yelling on the floor behind him as he travels to the lift every day. Every _wanker_ and _who the fuck do you think you are_ ascend up into the cosmos as he descends to the ground floor. He tries very hard to be the kind of person who doesn’t care what people think of him. Most days he can let it go.

He packs up for the day at precisely 17.00 and boards the bus home. He knits to unwind and loses himself in the sounds of one-sided phone conversations and laughter and honking horns and wind blowing and life occurring.

Harry doesn’t like silence. The city and all of its noise was always the only option for him.

\--

_Harold woke up at 7.15. He stopped his alarm, gave his face a good rubbing, and rolled out of bed to pee._

_If one had asked Harold Styles, he would have said that this Tuesday morning was exactly like all Tuesdays from the past six years. And it began the same way—_

Harry looks up, certain he heard something. He pauses, very still, toothbrush suspended where it was massaging his upper left gums. Nothing. He brushes again.

 _And it began_ —

Harry stops again because he definitely heard something.

“Hello?” he calls out, craning his neck out to look through the open bathroom door to his bedroom. His wristwatch and the room greet him with silence.

He brushes again.

 _And it began the same way it always did. Others would perhaps_ —

“Who’s there?” Harry says, mouth full of toothpaste. He stomps out of the bathroom and around his small flat to find no strangers lurking, no televisions left on, no neighbors stirring. He returns to the bathroom, perplexed but determined to keep up his schedule.

_Others would perhaps fantasize about their day, make plans for the weekend, regret life decisions. Harold just counted his brushstrokes to the allegro tempo of 152._

“Okay, who just said, _Harold just counted his brushstrokes to the allegro tempo of 152_? How do you know I’m counting brushstrokes?” Harry demands at his ceiling. He receives no response. “Are you keeping time of my brushstrokes?” he demands at his toothbrush, which does not respond.

He sets his toothbrush down, nearly forgets to rinse his mouth, and makes quick work of dressing.

 _For someone who lived his life musically, Harold’s life was strangely devoid of actual music_.

“It’s Harry,” he corrects instinctively. He groans because he is pointedly _not_ about to begin arguing with a disembodied voice suddenly narrating unnervingly accurate insights into his life.

He grabs his customary banana and briefcase from the kitchen table and sprints out of his flat. To his dismay, the voice travels with him.

 _Harold never joined the huddled masses of headphoned individuals on public transit. He had instead the music of his life and the music of the city_.

“Did you hear that?” Harry asks the headphoned individual standing next to him at the bus stop. He has arrived far too early this morning due to his truncated morning routine.

The headphoned individual looks at Harry. “Sorry?” he says without pulling either of his headphones out.

“Did you hear the voice? _He had instead the music of his life and the music of the city_?”

“The Black Keys,” responds the stranger with a raise of his phone to show Harry the album cover on the screen.

“No, I mean, the voice--don’t worry about it.” Harry stops himself as the stranger looks back out to the street again. Harry sighs.

The voice narrates lovely and irritating prose about the views of London on his commute to work. Plugging his ears doesn’t work, neither does humming.

Harry is flustered by a particularly colorful description of the body odor of the person sharing the lift with him. He heads immediately for the break room for his tea, but not just because the voice told him he _desired to bathe himself in the aroma of English Breakfast before he felt like he could move on with his life_.

“Harry,” calls one of the usual chaps from where he leans against a cubicle wall, “what’s thirteen percent of 497,265?”

“59,671.8.”

_Harold said distractedly, though the correct answer was 64,644.45._

“Wait, sorry, it’s 64,644.45.”

The lads nod disinterestedly and return to their conversation. Harry wonders for the first time if they ever had a legitimate mathematical reason for stopping him, or if this was a more covert way of taking the piss.

Later in the day, Harry finds inaction is the best solution to his problem. He is stopped in the middle of filing, testing the waters, when Niall enters the pristine white file room with two files pinched under his left arm.

“Hey, mate,” he says easily, approaching Harry. “What are you doing?” He has eyes on the abandoned pile of to-be-filed files.

“I’m waiting.”

“For what?”

Harry looks at Niall and makes the quick, though likely idiotic, decision to trust him. “A voice has been following me around all day, talking about the things I’m doing.”

“You’re hearing voices?”

“Just one voice. Watch.” Harry slowly slides a file from his pile and eases it into the filing cabinet.

_Harold utilized the slow drag technique of filing, often imagining the sound of the file as a crowd roaring._

“Did you hear that? _Harold utilized the slow drag technique of filing, often imagining the sound of the file as a crowd roaring._ He calls me Harold.”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“The thing is, I do sometimes imagine the sound of a crowd roaring.”

“I thought your name was Harry.”

“It is Harry.”

Niall makes a noise of consideration with a little thoughtful shake of his head. He slides a file across and pushes it into the slot in the cabinet in the same careful way Harry did. “I can kind of see that.” He makes a whispery ahhhh sound of a crowd and Harry nods and points.

“That’s the sound, yes. And this morning, the voice knew I was brushing my teeth at a 152 tempo.”

Niall perks up. “Do you play an instrument as well?”

“No, I don’t—what do you mean _as well_?”

Niall’s face falls a little. “I thought you knew. You sort of. Sing sometimes. At your desk. Or in here. Or just. A lot.”

“Oh. Yeah. It’s not. Intentional. Subconscious, sort of.” Harry kind of wants to melt back into the endless rows of filing cabinets and become one with organization than sit through another bout of people laughing at him and calling him Kylie Minogue.

If anything, he figures he’s Chris Martin.

“You sound good, though,” Niall says quickly. “I play the guitar.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“I’m a man of many talents.” They smile at each other, bonding and all. “Does the voice say anything about me?”

“Not so far.”

Niall nods as if this is par for the course. He looks up and around as if he too is straining to hear the voice. Neither of them hear anything.

“Right.” Niall claps his hands together. “Well. If you need to talk about it or anything.”

“Thanks. I, um. I think I’ll just try to forget this whole thing, honestly, because the alternative is that I’ve gone mad. Ha.”

“Definitely. Even so.” Niall turns to leave. “Oh, right, I came in to tell you—new audits. Would you prefer the landscaper or the baker?”

“Baker,” Harry says instantly, taking the offered folder, and not just because the narrator says so.

\--

Harry honestly thinks he deserves some sort of kudos for not going home, wrapping himself in a ball, and praying to wake up from a dream. He soldiers onto his appointment, if not purely out of professionalism. Harry stands just inside the door and makes his initial observations.

 _Haphazardly painted across the door in blocky letters was the name of the bakery,_ The Uprising _, a pun Harold thoroughly appreciated. There were only five customers: two students chatting quietly over books, one mother and daughter sharing a piece of cake, and one homeless-looking man humming over a steaming cup of tea._

_The interior design was less a design, more a product of circumstance: mismatched chairs and tables cluttered the shop. Harold imagined each piece of furniture had a previous home before finding its way to the bakery, an island for misfit furniture and taxpayers. The chaos of the bakery reflected the chaos incarnate in the baker. Only Harold’s wristwatch appropriately feared the oncoming storm._

“Great,” Harry mumbles to himself as he maneuvers through the chairs and sofas to the counter, a glass case full of delicious treats on display that separates the dining area from the open kitchen. Harry likes the idea of being able to see the baking happen. A person is tucked deep within the lime green refrigerator behind the counter.

“Pardon me, but I’m looking for Louis Tomlinson?” he says.

“It’s Lou-ee,” the man corrects, pulling himself from the depths of the refrigerator with a bowl of dough.

_The baker Louis Tomlinson would probably kill you if you referred to him as petite or delicate. His frame could be considered petite, but the way he decorated it suggested anything but. Dark tattoos littered his right arm, all perfectly visible with the black sleeveless shirt he wore. His hair was half in the air, half in his face, messy in a way that could only have been styled very specifically. A lazy amount of stubble covered his sharp jaw. His fierce bright eyes were offset by dark lashes._

_There had to be other people like this in the world, but as far as Harold Styles was concerned in that very moment, there could only be one._

Harry’s brain short-circuits immediately and he almost misses the appraising once over the baker gives him. The baker smirks. “How can I help you, Curly?”

Harry blinks for a moment, subconsciously throwing a hand up to his hair. His soft, messy, curly bed hair that he had completely forgotten to do this morning. How had it not occurred to him until just now? It might have something to do with the sudden appearance of voices in his head. Harry feels his cheeks flush with proper embarrassment.

Harry’s brain is still undergoing the rebooting process as he realizes it’s his line. He pulls his identification from his briefcase and dumbly waves the badge in the air. “I’m Harry Styles from HMRC. I am to audit you,” he blurts, far from his usual careful introduction speech. He holds his other hand out to Louis.

Louis’ crinkle-eyed smile drops instantly into a cold glare, his eyes sharp enough to pierce Harry’s skin. “Are you fucking with me?”

Harry stares, terrified. He drops the proffered hand.

“Are you fucking serious?” Louis challenges again.

“I’m not, um, _messing_ with you. I’m actually legally unable to mess with you. The HMRC takes that sort of behavior very seriously,” he says at last. He takes a few deep breaths and tries to right himself. He is a professional, _dammit_. He projects warmth.

“Are you smiling? Do you get off on this shit?” Louis snaps and Harry drops his courteous smile instantly.

Harry _was_ smiling, but only because he is trying to _project warmth_. “No, I apologize if I--”

“Fuck off. Don’t you fucking apologize to me.”

“I’m sorry--” He cuts himself off and glances at the few customers who have turned to see why there has been a sudden increase in shouted expletives. “Is there perhaps somewhere we could go to discuss this? An office?”

Louis’ eyes narrow before he shrugs. “I’m good here.” He moves over to the island behind him and begins coating the surface with flour.

“All right.” Harry sets his briefcase gently on the counter and pulls Louis’ file from it, even though he already has it memorized. “I understand you didn’t pay all of your taxes last year.”

“That’s right,” Louis says as he begins to rub flour over a rolling pin. Whether it’s an intentionally suggestive action, Harry isn’t sure. And he _doesn’t_ find it distracting.

“Right.” He clears his throat. “Well. I believe you only paid 73%.”

“73.47%, yes.”

Harry blinks. “So you did it on purpose?”

“Yes,” Louis says firmly, kneading the dough.

“That’s. Stealing. You stole from the government.” Harry refuses to be flustered. Louis took the time to _calculate_.

“It’s not stealing. I just didn’t pay the government everything.”

“Mr. Tomlinson, you have to pay your taxes. All of them.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You don’t if you want to get audited.”

Louis begins to roll out the dough, and Harry is not looking at his muscled arms. What is wrong with me, Harry asks himself.

“You can only audit me if I recognize your authority to audit me.”

“I’m standing here, actively auditing you. You don’t have a choice,” Harry says, feeling a little petulant at last. Louis raises his eyebrows and purses his lips, but says nothing. “I have to go through the last four years of returns and records to make sure nothing else is missing.”

“If you insist,” he responds flippantly and flips over the dough.

Harry watches for another moment. “You need more flour on your pin.”

The level of coldness in Louis’ glare is overwhelming, and it feels like hot lava is being dumped over his head. Cold hot lava. Harry doesn’t know what temperature he is, he just knows he’s uncomfortable.

Harry also notes Louis does as he says, however begrudgingly.

“Is there any particular reason you feel exempt from Her Majesty’s tax laws?”

“Well. _Harold_ ,” he starts.

“It’s Harry,” he interrupts, something turning over deep in his stomach at the name.

“I’m glad you asked, Harold,” Louis says, unequivocally ignoring Harry’s interruption. “I’m in favor of building parks and filling potholes and sending kids to uni and even the closing ceremony of the Olympics. I’m happy, nay, privileged to pay for those things. However, I’m not in favor of paying for American wars, corporate bailouts, and whatever the hell Boris is up to these days. So those are the taxes I did not pay. I believe I sent a letter to this effect with my return.”

“Would this be the letter beginning with _Dear Imperialist Swine_?” Harry had found the letter entertaining, if not a bit frightening.

“The very one.”

“Mr. Tomlinson, what you describe in your letter is anarchy.”

“Perhaps,” he says lightly. “Harold,” he adds, seeming, Harry thinks, to take joy in the way it flusters Harry.

Harry blinks a few more times. “Are you an anarchist?”

“I refuse to be labeled by the oppressive majority,” Louis says, bathing in sarcasm.

“I’m not the oppressive majority. I’m just Harry,” he says, trying for levity. He fails to achieve levity if Louis’ unchanged demeanor is any indication. Harry refuses to be flustered, and he hopes if he tells himself he refuses to be flustered enough times, he’ll succeed. “You calculated an exact percentage.”

“Nothing gets past you.” Louis points flour-covered finger guns at Harry.

“How are you going to ensure your 73.47% is going to fund parks and potholes and university educations and not get dumped directly into Boris’s hair bleaching budget?”

Something flashes across Louis’ face, but he turns away to grab a baking sheet before Harry can take a closer look. “He’s a bottle blonde? What a coup.”

“Do you have any anarchist compatriots within Her Majesty’s government that can direct your payment to the appropriate departments?” Harry says very seriously. “In addition to tax audits, I’m also under obligation to weed out threats of high treason. For queen and country.”

Louis lets loose a loud chuckle, his smile stretched wide for one glorious moment before he seems to realize what he’s done. He then turns away to attend to the sudden buzzing timer of an oven. He leans over to inspect the contents of the oven and Harry has to practice breathing.

_If Harold were to make a list of his top five favorite things to look at, Louis’ face in the midst of laughter would surely make the list. Louis leaning over to inspect the contents of the oven may be another winner._

_Harold found it difficult to imagine Mr. Tomlinson, with his soft and brilliant smile, as a revolutionary._

“Please not now,” Harry mumbles to himself as he is faced with a new level of anger from the baker. Every measure of cool he had attempted to build in the last two minutes drains from him almost instantly.

_His high, gravelly voice shouting into bullhorns, fighting the good fight. His thin legs in those skin tight jeans couldn’t be very practical for dashing from tear gas._

“I, um,” Harry says as Louis places a tray of muffins onto the counter in front of him. He then rests his hands on the counter, his body forming a trapezoid with the ground. Harry thinks trapezoids are nice.

“I apologize. Ehm. I don’t think. We can.”

_Harold wasn’t prone to fantasies. So he tried his best to be professional._

Harry stares at Louis and Louis stares back, with an attitude of baffled concern as Harry stutters his way through whatever embarrassment seizure he was suffering. “I. Uh. Er. It’s just.”

 _But of course he failed_.

Harry huffs out a _ha_ at the voice, which he sort of realizes is not in context for his conversation with Louis.

_He couldn’t help but imagine Mr. Tomlinson stroking through his tangled curly hair in the morning._

Harry tries his best to look anywhere but Louis’ face.

_He couldn’t help but imagine him fitting his mouth over Harold’s whole finger to lick off a glob of cookie dough._

“It’s. Uh.”

_He couldn’t help but imagine Mr. Tomlinson naked, stretched out on his bed._

“Mr. Styles?”

“Hmm?”

“Eyes up top, soldier.”

“What?”

“You’re staring at my dick,” Louis answers with no trace of amusement.

He looks up from Louis’ pants to his eyes. Harry’s face burns with embarrassment and irritation. He’s never so openly objectified someone in his life. It isn’t appropriate. It isn’t fair. It sure as hell isn’t professional. “No. Um. I’m sorry. I wasn’t.”

“Then what were you looking at?”

“I’m sorry. We will have to reschedule. I assure you as a representative of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs that I wasn’t looking at. Um.”

“Reschedule,” the baker bites.

“Yes. For Friday.” Harry is certain his skin is pure red. If ever there were a moment he could believe in spontaneous combustion, it would be this one.

“I’m a reasonable person, Mr. Styles,” Louis says quietly, dangerously, “not without my faults, but reasonable nonetheless. But I assure you, should you return on Friday, you will experience the most tedious, painful audit of your pathetic, bureaucratic existence.”

“I can’t wait,” Harry says dumbly.

Louis brandishes a rolling pin at him. “Get fucked, _Tax Man_.”

“Tax man,” catcalls a member of their audience.

“Thanks for that,” Harry says to everyone and no one. He turns on his heel and bolts to the door.

_Harold suddenly found himself flushed, exasperated, standing outside the bakery…_

Harry stops immediately outside the bakery door and lets loose his bottled scream of frustration, hoping to drown the voice out.

 _…cursing the heavens in futility_.

“I’m not cursing the heavens, I’m cursing you, you stupid voice. You’re ruining bloody _everything_ ,” he shouts at the sky, jumping once to hit his point home.

He hears a throat clear behind him. He whirls around to find a dubious looking Louis Tomlinson half popped out the door with Harry’s briefcase in his hand. He lets it drop the five feet to the floor and promptly disappears behind the door.

“Perfect,” Harry shouts.

\--

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello Liam, hello Perrie! If you are reading this, I thank you.

With an eerie calm, Zayn looks out over the Thames. He hears the roaring sounds of cars as they speed behind him. Tower Bridge is as good a place as any, if not a little cliché. He inches forward from where he is leaned against the cold metal. He reaches his fingers out and feels out the whipping wind.

“Mr. Malik?”

Zayn blinks down at the kind face staring up at him. The interloping woman waits for him to respond.

“Can I help you?” Zayn snaps.

“Whatcha doin’ up there?” she asks, gesturing to the fact that he’s standing on the edge of his writing desk.

“Sounding my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world. Can I help you?”

“I’m Perrie, I understand your publisher sent me to be your assistant.” She flashes a bright smile and clasps her hands together in front of her. She looks like Mary Poppins come in on her umbrella to save the day.

“My babysitter, I think you mean.”

“Assistant. I understand you need a little help with the new novel.”

Zayn stares down at her and she looks up earnestly at him. “I may be a little blocked.”

“All right then. If you’ll join me down here, I’ve brought some brainstorming materials.”

“Brainstorming materials,” he deadpans.

“Brainstorming materials.” She holds up a bag to illustrate. Ah, spoonfuls of sugar and medicine to cure his writing illness.

“No offense to you, ma’am, but I rather think I’ll stick to what I know.” He closes his eyes and tries to take himself back to Tower Bridge, but Tower Bridge feels wrong.

“It’s Perrie, please. And I understand the pressure you are under.”

“Please never say _I understand_ again.”

“When a new novelist experiences the rapid worldwide success of their first novel, the idea of a second novel can be daunting. Often the success of the second novel can make or break a career,” she responds patiently, as patiently as she has this whole time. The patience is bordering on condescending than it is empathetic.

“Why are you verbalizing all of my darkest, most terrifying truths?” Zayn finally opens his eyes to squint at her.

“I’m just trying to let you know that I und—that I sympathize,” she emphasizes, taking a step towards him. He would take a step back, but he’s on a desk and he doesn’t much fancy falling over. “I know the stakes. I’ve helped over twenty authors finish over thirty books. I’ll be here at all hours, ready with a pen and paper and an open mind.”

Zayn folds his arms across his chest. “What do you think about jumping off Tower Bridge?”

She considers the question carefully. “I don’t think about jumping off Tower Bridge.”

“Yeah, I bet you don’t,” he says lowly.

“Are you thinking of jumping off Tower Bridge?” she says without the carefulness or concern that would usually accompany such a question. It just sounds sort of… fact gathering. Like, what’s your favorite color? What is your height? Are you thinking of jumping off Tower Bridge? What did you eat for breakfast?

“There may be something to it. The music of the city sounds, being enveloped by the furious wind, before plunging into the cold and unforgiving arms of the sea. Well. The unsanitary and putrid arms of the Thames, but the thought is there.”

She stares expectantly and he groans in self-pity, rubbing his face.

“It’s not right. It’s shit.”

“Not your best work,” she agrees.

Brutal, he thinks. “I’m just going to,” he starts, gesturing to his general area.

“Sure, be my guest,” she allows beneficently.

He closes his eyes and settles back into himself.

Harold would never throw himself off of anything and the likelihood of him ending up being a secret agent action hero in the position to be thrown off a bridge is, at this point, looking pretty low.

Falling is good, though, he likes what falling means. He likes the plunge. He likes how fast it seems and how slow it seems. He wonders if Harold would have time to reflect during the drop.

“Just,” Perrie interrupts. “Perhaps I could be more help if I knew what the problem was.”

“I don’t have a problem,” Zayn refutes instantly out of stubbornness, but he knows he’s already given himself away.

“I’ll just sit here, then, until you’re done standing on desks. Don’t worry about me, I’ve brought a book.”

Great. An assistant with cheek. He peeks one eye open at her. “What’s your favorite book?”

Perrie hums a little in consideration. “Hasn’t been written yet. But I’m sure it’s going to be great.”

Sighing deeply, he finally climbs down from atop his desk. He mumbles quietly, like it’s his deepest shame, “I don’t know how to kill Harold Styles.”

\--

 _Harold waited for his wristwatch to provide him the salvation that comes at 17.00. If his wristwatch understood mercy at all, it was incapable of showing it. Even on this, the most frustrating day of Harold's life thus far. Harold watched his watch nonetheless, the cruel digital seconds seeming to pass slower the longer he watched_.

Harry’s boss slides into view, mug in hand, concern on his face.

“Hey there, mate,” his boss says carefully.

“Hullo, Paul,” Harry replies.

“Just. Y’know. Checking in. Doin’ the ole checkaroo, old sport. How you doing?”

“I’m well,” Harry says, glancing back down to his wristwatch. 16.56.37. “Yourself?”

“Great, great, it’s just. There’s a bit of chitter-chatter, mate, y’know, office gossip, rumblings, if you will.”

_Harold was unable to take anyone seriously whose entire vocabulary consisted of phrases like chitter-chatter or checkaroo and an overdependence on reassuring ‘mates’. Harold’s boss seemed to take a sip from the mug as if to gather courage. Harold blinked up at him patiently._

“There are concerns that you may not be feeling tip top. That maybe you’re feeling a might wibbly wobbly?”

Harry figures perhaps taking turns to stare at his computer or his wristwatch without actually doing anything else since he returned to the office three hours ago may be considered _wibbly wobbly_ behavior. So he does have a point.

“I was running late so I forgot to do my hair,” he lies, hoping this covers any ground Paul wants to cover.

“It’s all good, mate. But I noticed, just sort of casually flipping through your employee file, no big deal, that you haven’t taken a day off in… four years.”

Harry doubts a day off would solve this particular problem.

“Are you saying you want me to take a holiday?”

“I’m _not_ saying it would be a bad idea.”

_It hit him then, the baker could have called up his boss and lodged a complaint. Harold could be in the middle of the least effective sacking speech of all time. This was it for him. His career was over and the anarchic baker had done him in._

And the infuriating voice in his head has done him in, Harry adds bitterly.

“Have I done something wrong?” He attempts to sound calm, but it comes out a little less than manic.

“Goodness, no, kiddo. You’re tip-top. Best of the best. Couldn’t do it without you. Just a little concerned with a burnout, we are.” He claps a hand hard to Harry’s shoulder in what Harry imagines is supposed to be more comforting than painful.

His wristwatch loyally chirps twice to indicate his release at long last. “I’ll think about it. Thanks, Paul,” he says quickly, grabbing his briefcase and sprinting for the lift. From a quick glance at Paul, Harry can tell Paul doesn’t know what Harry agreed to think about either.

Harry all but runs to the bus stop, as he aches for the comfort of his home. He’s still far too early for his bus, so he stands and practices breathing and not thinking about anything.

He fails because he thinks about everything. He’s got pages and pages of words floating around in his head, revealing deep secrets or things Harry didn’t even realize was true about himself. They had to be true, right? Everything the voice says sinks deep into his skin and feels like the truth. He doesn’t know how to describe it and the voice won’t describe it for him.

Harry’s wristwatch begins to beep insistently. Harry looks down at it, pokes at it. The blue screen of the face lights up like it does with his morning alarm.

_Harold assumed his wristwatch was on the fritz—which was honestly on par with how his afternoon was going. It never occurred to him that his wristwatch was trying to tell him something._

The two commuters next to Harry begin to stare as the wristwatch beeps louder, seeming to jump a full octave as well.

“Fine, then, what is it?” he challenges the watch. He throws an imploring look to the commuters. “Pardon me.”

_In fact, Harold had never once paid attention to his wristwatch, except to check the time. And honestly, it drove his wristwatch mad._

“I’m listening. I’m paying attention now. Please stop,” Harry beseeches into the wristwatch, looking quite like a secret agent. When the watch continues beeping, he pulls the watch off and stuffs it into his pocket. The sound is not any better muted. He gives a nervous glance around the street and thinks for a moment he spies Louis Tomlinson walking across the street.

_On this particular Tuesday, his wristwatch made the decision to do something about it._

He cranes his neck for a better view when his wristwatch ceases beeping.

_His wristwatch suddenly stopped, if out of nothing else but sheer frustration._

Harry pulls the watch out again and inspects it. It’s dead for a moment, which causes a minor panic to rise in Harry, before it pops back to life and 00.00 flashes insistently at him to indicate he must reenter the time.

“Pardon me, do you have the time?” he asks the commuter next to him.

“I’ve got 5.08,” the commuter answers and Harry dutifully sets the time.

_So Harold’s watch thrust him onto the mercy of the cruel beast called Fate. As he reset the time of his watch, little did Harold know that this simple, seemingly innocuous act would ultimately result in his death._

Harry nearly falls over. His heart stops beating for a moment and he has to wheeze in a breath.

“What?” he breathes, looking to the sky. “What?” he repeats louder. “Did you just? Did you. You said it would ultimately result in my death? What? Did you?” He glances down at his wristwatch, which silently looks up at him. “Did it just say my death?”

The other commuters stare at Harry as the bus stops in front of them. He wants to stay put and obstinately wait for the voice to return and explain itself. _This simple, seemingly innocuous act would ultimately result in his death._

Harry wishes the exact words wouldn’t taunt him so clearly. He boards the bus finally, desperate to hear the colorful descriptions of his commute home. He hears nothing.

He storms into his flat.

“Where are you?” he shouts at the air as he storms into his bathroom. He begins brushing his teeth rhythmically. “ _Harold just counted brushstrokes to the allegro tempo of 152_ ,” he says awkwardly around the brush. He throws the toothbrush down and picks up his hair brush.

“Harold finally combed his hair into submission,” he announces to the world. “Everything would be okay if Harold just fixed his stupid hair.” He throws the brush down and storms into his room.

He picks the lamp off his bedside table, not at all mindful of the way the plug yanks out of the socket. “Harold furiously picked up the lamp.” He hurls it across the room and into the wall, barely missing his window. “With ease, Harold smashed the lamp into the wall, the sound much like bloody crash symbols.”

He gets no response. “Say something,” he unleashes into the room.

He stares at the shards. “Harold doesn’t know what to do.” He collapses next to them, covering his head in his arms.

“Harry is terrified,” he says quietly.

\--

He could tell almost immediately that this doctor wasn’t going to be any help. He refuses to think of the implications of the HMRC having an on-site therapist, willing and ready to talk to employees during business hours.

The therapist practically shouts at him repeatedly, chanting terrifying words like _schizophrenia_ and _prescribed medication_. Harry isn’t crazy, he knows he’s not crazy. In fact, he rejects the word crazy altogether, he decides he finds it quite offensive.

He leaves the therapist’s office with some measure of discouragement and he practically hopes he hears the voice again, despite the fact that the voice disappearing could solve, at this point, about 80% of his problems.

He runs into Niall as he comes out of the lift to his floor.

“Harry!” Niall greets cheerfully. “How’re you doing?”

“All right.” _Absolutely freaking out_ is what Harry means.

“Heard any voices?” he says quietly, conspiratorially.

“Not today,” Harry answers glumly.

“That’s great!” he answers, clapping Harry on the shoulder.

“I guess.” He considers Niall for a moment and makes another giant leap of faith. He grabs Niall’s wrist and leads him into the file room to find some privacy. Niall goes easily, looking a bit bemused.

“Niall. Say this voice is narrating my life. It talks about my life, about my wristwatch, about how I brush my teeth.” About my fantasies of Louis Tomlinson, he adds silently.

“I remember, tempo of 152,” Niall says encouragingly.

“Right, kind of like I was a character in a book, you know? And it comes and goes, the voice, and this is the longest it’s been since it’s talked and. Well. Yesterday it ended on quite the cliffhanger and I just can’t leave it at that. That can’t be the end of it. I won’t allow it.”

“Yeah?”

“What should I do to figure out what’s going to happen?”

Niall considers this, genuinely considers this, hand on his chin and everything, and in that moment, Harry thinks there’s no one better in the world than Niall Horan.

“I guess… You would talk to someone who knows about literature?”

“That’s a great idea.” Harry smiles and nods vigorously. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” Niall says easily, clapping him again on the shoulder. He appears to do that a lot. Harry finds it comforting in a way that Paul’s own shoulder grasp wasn’t. Niall squeezes comfortingly.

“Listen, Harry, what are you doing for lunch?”

“I have to make an appointment for lunch today, actually,” Harry answers, suddenly all-consumed with finding someone who knows something about literature. “What are you doing for lunch?”

“Apparently not spending it with you.” He chuckles.

“Oh,” Harry says, not realizing it had been an invitation. He panics for a moment before he figures out what the appropriate course of action is. Slink away in embarrassment? Probably not. “We could tomorrow?”

Niall smiles bright. “Excellent. Hold you to it.” He backs away, pointing his fingers at Harry. “Did your hair today.”

“Yep,” he says stupidly, subconsciously smoothing it and remembering how hopeful he was this morning that the voice would start back up again if he just resumed his normal routine. Niall rounds the corner and is out of sight before Harry thinks of anything more to say on the subject.

Harry moves back out of the file room toward his desk.

“Hey, Harry, what’s the square root of 499?” calls his coworker.

“It’s irrational. Just like you,” he says, not bothering to stop and look at the man.

He pulls up a web browser and hesitates as he thinks what to search.

Literature professors who know how to solve my existential crisis?

People who think the voice in my head is a product of storytelling and not severe mental illness?

\--

“Work.”

“Tedious.”

“Business.”

“Impersonal.”

“Music.”

“Inspiration.”

“Destiny.”

“Impossible.”

Perrie lifts an inquisitive eyebrow. “Aren’t you writing a book about destiny?”

Zayn lies back on his desk and sighs, covering his face with his hands. “Am I?”

“Sure seems like it,” Perrie chirps.

“Maybe it’s not so much destiny as it is inevitability.”

“What’s the difference?”

He eyes her as he takes a drag from his cigarette. “I don’t know. There are right choices and wrong choices for your life, aren’t there? At any given moment, you are faced with making the right decision and reaping the benefits or making the wrong decision and facing the consequences. And that’s what we spend all of our time thinking about and doing and obsessing over. Is this the right path for me? Is this what is right for me or is going to make me happy or is going to make me rich or is going to make me the least stressed?

“Anyway, that’s what they feel like, choices. But, fuck, are they even choices? Or is there someone or something orchestrating all the good shit and the bad shit? And does it even matter if we’re all headed in the same direction? What difference do any of our choices make if we’re headed in that one direction, slow and inevitable or fast and inevitable? Harold worries about his life and his choices, but doesn’t the inevitability of his death make all of his choices basically irrelevant?”

Perrie lets out a slow whistle. “That’s some heavy shit.”

Zayn chuckles and props himself up on the desk, stubbing out his cigarette on the table. “Yeah, I’m not drunk enough for this conversation, actually.”

“There’s the smile. I knew you had one.”

Zayn narrows his eyes. “I smile all the time.”

“Not while I’ve been around.”

“You’ve been around a day.”

“I know. And yet not a single smile.” She pulls a small trashcan from the corner of the desk and gingerly sweeps the finished cigarette in. Zayn pretends he doesn’t see the look of judgment on her face. “More word association?”

“I don’t think it’s helping.”

“You haven’t written anything since last night.”

“I am aware.”

He casts a steely glare down at her. They’ve already had a discussion about her taking the time to state the obvious, especially when the obvious is something that haunts Zayn at all hours of the day. He _knows_ he hasn’t written anything since the announcement of Harold Styles’ impending death. It’s eating away at him.

“What’s next?” she prompts.

“Well, obviously, they meet again.”

“Friday for the audit?”

“Nah, it’s gotta be sooner than that, yeah?”

“A chance meeting. A twist of fate.”

Zayn gives a short laugh. “Something like that.” He lies back down on top of the desk and asks Harold what he’s doing now.

_Talk to me, Harold. What’s going on with you? How do you want me to kill you?_

He smiles and shakes his head a little because he knows what Harold would say: _Well, I’d rather you didn’t kill me._

“Maybe it’s to do with the people you leave behind?” she asks thoughtfully.

“What?”

“Maybe what makes your choices matter is what it does for the people you leave behind.”

Zayn makes a noncommittal noise but he has to admit there’s something to that.

\--

Harry wills himself to knock on the professor’s door but is somehow unable to. Probably because he’s terrified of literally all of possible conclusions that could be wrought from Harry’s situation. Also probably because he’ll get laughed right the hell out of the office. A professor doesn’t have to maintain the professional courtesy a doctor does.

Harry is exactly on time at the door, so say the bells on the tower at the front of campus. He had arrived to the campus at least twenty minutes early out of nerves, which made him in turn even more nervous to not have planned the trip as efficiently as he could have. He had also noted with delight the lovely song the bells played at the top of the hour, instead of the customary hour chime.

The door swings open instead and Harry is met with a young man with a surprised look on his face. The man is built broad and the brown eyes hidden behind large black frames are kind.

“Are you Dr. Cowell?” Harry says.

“Oh. No. Are you Mr. Styles?”

“Yes.”

“Great! Sir, your twelve fifteen is here,” he says into the room.

“Send him in. That’ll be all, Payne,” answers the room.

“Please come in,” Payne says, holding the door for Harry to pass through before closing it behind himself as he exits.

Most of the room is stuffed from floor to ceiling with shelves and shelves of books. It’s sort of overwhelming and beautiful at the same time. Harry walks cautiously toward the professor, a bored-looking middle aged man sitting lazily behind the large wooden desk at the other end of the room. He holds a pen in the air but doesn’t seem to be writing anything. Harry has his hand outstretched, about to introduce himself.

“You’re the one having problems with the narrator, then?” says the professor, making no moves to grab Harry’s hand, so he drops it.

“Yes. It’s, um, following me around. Although it stopped yesterday evening.”

He gestures for Harry to take a seat at last. Harry plops himself in an uncomfortably rigid chair in front of his desk. He feels a little like he’s on trial, about to receive judgment of some kind.

“Which class are you in?”

Harry pauses. “I’m not in a class.”

Dr. Cowell raises an eyebrow. “Are you here in a professional capacity, then?”

“Yes, I’m a professional. I mean. I’m an auditor with the HMRC.”

He frowns, shifting forward in his seat to squint at Harry. “Where does the narrator come in?”

“It’s following me around? It’s in my head, I hear it. I’m sorry if I wasn’t very clear in my email.”

“I don’t answer emails, Payne does,” he answers dismissively as if Harry is supposed to know that. “What do you mean following you around? Is this a joke?”

“No, I assure you, this isn’t a joke.”

“Payne!” he shouts and not even a second later the young man barges in, as though he were listening at the door. “What the fuck is this?” he asks, gesturing to Harry.

“He says he needs help,” Payne starts before Dr. Cowell interrupts him.

“Get out of my office. Both of you.”

Harry stares for a moment before stumbling to his feet and sprinting out the door.

That went exactly how Harry had imagined it would, no surprises there. As if there were any person in the world willing to take him seriously. He should just go home and be glad the voice is gone and pretend like this all never happened and ignore the fact that he’s consumed with the thought of his imminent death.

“Wait,” shouts a voice, jogging after Harry.

Harry turns to Payne. “I really don’t think I’m up for any more embarrassment today, thank you, though.”

“I’m really sorry about that. But I still want to hear your story.”

“Why?” Harry says, feeling all of his frustration and confusion and exhaustion breathed into the one word.

“I like a challenge.” He holds his hand out. “I’m Liam Payne, his graduate assistant. Very nearly a PhD myself.”

“Harry,” he says, shaking his hand firmly.

“Pleasure, Harry. Join me in my office?” he asks, gesturing to the giant tree in the quad in front of them, the largest of seven trees in the area, easily 9 meters high.

“I wasn’t honestly sure I was reading your email correctly. You’re hearing literary voices,” Liam clarifies as soon as they’ve settled down. Liam stretches out with his back against the trunk, while Harry folds into himself. He thinks momentarily about getting dirt on his grey suit.

“Voice. It’s just one voice. It’s a man’s. Sounds young. From the north. And I’m here because the voice stopped talking,” Harry says, looking anywhere but Liam in favor of taking in his surroundings.

“And this one voice was telling you to do things?”

“No. It’s telling me _about_ the things I do. Accurately and with a better vocabulary. And a slight tendency towards melodrama.”

Liam lifts his eyebrows and makes a note in his small black notebook.

“Like I was a character in a story,” Harry continues when Liam says nothing. “I woke up yesterday morning with it practically doing _it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife_ at me in the bathroom and it kept going the whole day. But I feel like I’m not getting the whole story. Does that make sense?”

“Not really,” Liam states. “But tell me everything. Start from the beginning.”

Harry then tells him everything (except the fantasies, thank you very much) and Liam listens attentively and respectfully, casually making notes into his notebook.

“My wristwatch is beeping uncontrollably and then it dies, because it’s frustrated at me, apparently, which is _not very fair_ , it’s just a wristwatch. So I go to put in the time and the voice tells me that because I put the time in the wristwatch, I’m going to die.”

Liam nods and finishes making out all of the notes he’s thinking of, leaving Harry to sit for several minutes of awkward silence.

“So are you crazy or…?” Liam asks once he’s finished.

Harry sputters at his bluntness. “I don’t think you’re allowed to say that to crazy people? Schizophrenia is a serious illness.”

“I just figured I’d get it out there.” Liam shrugs casually and Harry almost laughs.

“I don’t think I’m crazy, no.”

“It’s just. I swore to myself I would hear you out, but now that I have, I’m not so sure I can help you.” Liam looks sincere enough, and this was pretty much the reaction Harry has been expecting (and receiving) all day, but he still finds the news discouraging.

Harry sighs. “You’re not sure you can help me.”

Liam purses his lips. “If I told you that you were going to die tomorrow, would you believe me?”

“No,” Harry says, frowning at him.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know you.”

“Then why do you believe this voice?”

Harry has only asked himself this question about seventeen times since yesterday evening. “Because it’s been right about everything else.”

Liam considers him for a moment. “Close your eyes.”

“What?”

“Close them please.”

Harry closes his eyes.

“How many trees are in this quad?”

“Why are you asking me that?”

“How many trees are in this quad?” Liam repeats patiently.

“Seven.”

“How many windows are facing the quad in the building behind you?”

“Eighteen, six per floor.”

“The bells in the bell tower at the north end of campus, what kind are they?”

“Carillon.”

“How many octaves?”

“Three.”

“How could you tell?”

“From the song it was playing at noon.”

“Open your eyes, Harry. How did I know you could answer those things?”

Harry stares at him. “Are you trying to tell me I’m a thoroughly predictable human being?”

“Of course not. I’m just saying if there are things I can read about you, there are certainly things you are able to read about yourself. Even if it seems like information outside of yourself. Because you are yourself.” Liam chuckles. “I just need to say _yourself_ one more time. Yourself.”

“It doesn’t feel like it’s me, though,” Harry points out. “The voice feels like it’s outside of me, greater than me. But it feels like the truth. I don’t know if it’s the right way to explain it, but it just feels like the truth.” Harry checks in with Liam, who nods encouragingly. “I was just doing what I thought I was supposed to be doing, going about my life as I thought I was supposed to do, and then the voice up and lands on me, _little did Harold know this single, seemingly innocuous act would ultimately result in his death_.”

Liam hums thoughtfully, straightening up. “I see,” Liam says and it seems like he does. “Okay, I can help you.”

“You can? Two minutes ago you said you couldn’t.”

“It’s been a very revealing two minutes. Little did he know, Harry—you’re name isn’t Harold, right?”

“No.”

“Curious.”

“The baker sometimes calls me Harold.”

“Even more curious. Anyway, little did he know, Harry, did you know that’s in the third person? It’s third person limited, seems like, only talks about you, from your perspective. Although there’s the bother with the wristwatch that could push it into omniscient, we’ll look at that. But also, it implies there’s something you don’t know--now, why would a voice in your head bother acknowledging there’s something you don’t know, when it’s in your head, so clearly you know it, so there’s no reason for your own subconscious to pretend it doesn’t know something. On top of all the other things that don’t make sense, _that_ makes very, very little sense.”

Liam doesn’t seem to have breathed once since starting. Harry blinks at him.

“I’m confused. But I think you just said you’re on my side,” Harry says slowly.

“You should come back next Tuesday, wait--When are you set to die?”

Harry is practically bowled over by the casualness of Liam’s enquiry. He doesn’t know when he’s going to die, that’s part of the problem, that’s the scariest part of the problem, probably, besides the general knowledge that he is going to die.

Harry chokes out, “The voice didn’t say.”

“That’s a shame,” Liam says, frowning and staring at his notes.

“You’re not very good at this comforting thing, are you, Liam?”

Liam considers this for a moment. “I am reliably informed I have a tendency to put my foot in my mouth.”

Harry nods in acknowledgment. “What should I do?”

Liam rises, so Harry follows. “If the voice starts talking again, write down as much as you can follow. Come back tomorrow, after you finish work, meet me right here. Yeah?”

“All right.” Harry gathers his briefcase. “How did you know how many octaves the carillon bells have?”

“I didn’t,” Liam says with a smile and a shrug, “but you said it with such authority, I believed you. Listen, good luck, mate. And, uh, try your best not to start sentences with, _This will be the last time I dot dot dot._ Y’know. Just in case. Don’t tempt fate.”

\--

_Harold was deep in thought on the 5.18 District train to his monthly Wednesday meeting in Chiswick._

“Oh, thank god,” Harry mutters to himself, hastily reaching for the legal pad he stowed in his briefcase this afternoon.

_For a few brief moments, from Victoria to Sloane Square, he was able to file away the stresses and calculations of the day and focus on the rhythmic chugging of the train as it navigated its usual course through the London Underground. There was something to be said for the dependability of train tracks, the path laid ahead, sure and steady._

_As much as Harold admired train tracks, his heart belonged on the buses above ground, where life offered more instruments to fill Harold’s orchestra. But on this day, Harold felt at ease with constrictions of the train tracks. How perfect, then, in this moment of solemnity, Louis Tomlinson would appear_.

Harry jerks his head up from his page so quickly he hurts his neck. He massages it, looking around to confirm the voice’s announcement. He sees Louis step from the platform onto the train. Louis looks left, then right, before inching his way left, towards Harry.

“Mr. Tomlinson!” Harry calls, even though he’s not sure he should.

Louis looks around for a moment before casting a dissatisfied glance once he’s found it’s Harry talking. Both he and Harry note around the same time the only unoccupied chair sits between Harry and a napping gentleman to his left.

“Mr. Tomlinson, hi. It’s Harry. Styles, Harry Styles. From the HMRC.” He waits pleasantly for a response, which takes ages to come.

“Hello,” Louis says.

“Would you like to sit down?”

“No.”

“Okay. You should hold on, then.”

Louis seems determined to stand unassisted, as he crosses his arms in spite. The jerking motion of the train as it shoots forward rattles Louis very nearly into Harry’s lap and only then does he decide to sit.

“How are you?” Harry says.

“Terrible. I’m being audited,” he snaps.

“Oh.”

“By a real twat as well.”

“Right.” They sit in silence. “Mr. Tomlinson, I believe I owe you an apology.”

“Whatever for?” Louis raises his eyebrows with false surprise.

“I just want to apologize for my actions Tuesday. I am fully aware of how inappropriate it is to, um, objectify people I am professionally involved with. Not involved with. And not just professional people, just people in general. It’s bad to do that for everyone. It’s, ah. I wasn’t on my best behavior that day. I had left my manners back at the office, along with my brain. And. Um. I. I apologize. In any case.”

Louis looks at Harry hard and Harry thinks he might whither under the stare. “I accept, Harold. But only because you just fell all over yourself in a way that was not at all endearing.”

“Thank you.”

_Harold might have ran a victory lap if he hadn’t been on a train. Feeling his biggest obstacle lay behind him, Harold prattled on with confidence._

“Do you often take the tube? For. Travel?” Harry sighs inwardly at his poor performance.

 _Well, the air of confidence, at least_.

“I prefer the bus. But today I’m running late.”

Harry considers this admission a win, a signal to keep up the conversation. “For dumping tea into the Boston Harbor in defiance of the Stamp Tax?”

“That is a hideous misuse of tea that even I would never be in favor of,” Louis says with a joking sniff. “I’m on for the Guy Fawkes Memorial Explosives Enthusiast Society and Knitting Circle.”

“That’s a mouthful.”

“Indeed.” He nods somberly. “We’re brainstorming catchier names tonight, in fact. Care to join?”

“I do have my needles with me, but unfortunately I’ve got other plans,” Harry answers.

Louis narrows his eyes again, but this time it seems playful. “That sounded really too truthful to be a joke.”

Harry considers how easily he could lie in this moment. Instead Harry pulls his knitting needles, which are worked into the beginnings of a hat, and a small ball of dark yarn from his briefcase.

“You do not knit!” Louis laughs, delighted, pulling the items from Harry’s hands and inspecting them. “Just when I thought you couldn’t get squarer.”

“There’s nothing wrong with knitting,” he says prudishly, hoping Louis figures he’s joking. He recovers his knitting supplies, his hands brushing quite unnecessarily long over Louis’.

Louis chuckles in the back of his throat. “What are your plans, then, that are more important than planning the destruction of the Houses of Parliament while purling?”

“Once a month I go to a home for pensioners. Look over their finances, answer any questions, make sure everything’s all right for them.”

“What a Boy Scout,” he answers softly. Louis smiles and Harry pretends Louis’ not doing it in spite of himself.

_Harold quickly calculated the odds of making a complete tit of himself before either of them left. He wanted to end with the sight of Louis’ smile. The odds were too great._

“This is me, then. Nice to have seen you,” Harry announces just as they’re pulling into the next station. He hops out of the train before Louis’ response. Harry stands with his back to the train until it pulls away. He then does a little jumping dance of victory.

_Harold was elated by the somewhat successfully flirtatious encounter with Louis Tomlinson._

“Yes, but it was _completely_ successful!” he answers the voice, pointing up. He swings his arms and spins a three-sixty.

_So elated that he exited the train seven stops early and would have to wait for the next train. Which would make him four and a half minutes late to his meeting._

Harry freezes mid-spin. “Really? You’re telling me this _now_?” His shoulders sag as he approaches the edge of the platform once more, but nothing much else seems to matter but Louis Tomlinson. 

\--


	3. Chapter 3

There is a twelve car pileup and there’s screaming. There’s fire roaring as if only to spite the rain. The air is thick with helplessness and terror. There is drama in chaos and trauma.

It’s still not right, Zayn thinks and blinks the wreckage away. The street is clear but for the gridlock of cars honking uselessly at the morning traffic.

“It’s raining,” Perrie points out from where she has appeared suddenly behind him.

“Well spotted,” he says, having stopped caring about the rain twenty minutes ago. Although it is partially soaking his cigarettes, so he supposes he minds that.

“Will you come back inside?”

Zayn will not. He likes the roof. “There are no car accidents inside.”

“There is also no rain inside. So it’s a fair trade.”

“Did you know that 40% of car accidents occur in inclement weather such as this?”

She comes to sit cross-legged next to him and shifts her umbrella over him as well. “Is it a bad day?”

“Yeah.”

It is a bad day. Zayn feels trapped, and he’s never felt trapped before. He never used to believe in writer’s block until this damn story, until Harold Styles refused to give him any hints as to what his path was. He can’t help but feel like a failure.

Zayn questions everything, all of his choices. He doesn’t like where the story’s come from or where the story’s headed. He begins to doubt whether Harold Styles should die at all. If he should, wouldn’t it be easy to knock him off? And worst of all, he’s begun to like Harold Styles. But you have to kill your darlings and all.

“I had kind of hoped you were done brooding.”

Zayn huffs. “I do not brood.”

“You do a bit. To cultivate an aura of mystery.”

“To cultivate an aura—ha!” Zayn shakes his head. The _nerve_. “That is some shit you are talking. Honestly, that’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever said and yesterday you asked me to spend fifteen minutes writing from the perspective of Harold’s banana.”

“So his wristwatch has sentience of sorts, but the banana is totally out of the question,” Perrie retorts.

Zayn will not dignify that statement with an answer and tells her as such. He looks resolutely back out at the street. A man stumbles suddenly, falling to his knees. He loses the use of his arms as he flops over. He tries to shout, but it’s unintelligible noises. A sea of people part around him. No one notices. Brain aneurysm. Can’t be helped, can’t be predicted.

Still not right, Zayn knows, and wipes the man from the street. Harold Styles lives another day.

\--

Thursday morning is as normal for Harry as it can be. He rolls out of bed at the sounds of his wristwatch—which Harry decides he is not mad at, despite possibly being the architect, or at least an accomplice, of his death. He brushes his teeth to his familiar brisk tempo and tames his hair with the appropriate precision. He grabs his banana and jogs to the bus stop. He is surprised to find he arrives a full minute and a half before the bus does.

He takes Niall to his usual lunch spot, casting perhaps too many glances at the guitar in the window of the music shop before Niall backtracks and makes them stare openly at it.

“Sick choice, Harry,” he notes. “You should get it.”

“I can’t play,” Harry answers.

“If you buy it, I’ll teach you,” Niall says like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he says, suddenly overwhelmed by gratefulness, and moves forward to escape it before he decides to do something idiotic.

They settle onto Harry’s customary bench. Harry tries to secretively jot down some notes the narrator says about Niall. Harry is surprised to find him suddenly part of the story.

“When did you get your start at HMRC?” Harry asks.

“’Bout a year ago. I just sort of fell into it. I’ll stay ‘til I’m pulled elsewhere, I suppose.” He shrugs. “What about you? You seem a bit young to be a senior auditor.”

“I went into it straight out of university six years ago.”

“Shit. So you’ve never done anything else with your life?”

“Just odd jobs during school,” Harry says, pretending not to think about the implication that he hasn’t done anything with his life. It was an honest enough question, but it was enough to make Harry wonder. Is being an auditor important enough to be his whole life?

“Did you always want to be an auditor?”

“I suppose I didn’t have that particular path in mind. But I worked a lot with finances and maths in school, and it was always the plan to look for something stable with growth opportunities. And I though, what’s more stable than taxes? Governments change, the economy changes, but taxes? Taxes are forever.”

Niall laughs, probably harder than is warranted, and Harry smiles.

“What’s that, then?” Niall says, taking a large bite and gesturing to the legal pad.

Harry wants to tell the truth, if not purely because lying is exhausting. “I’ve been tasked to write down everything the voice says.”

Niall nods. “What’s it been talking about?”

“Uh. You.”

“Oh.”

They sit in silence for a moment, chewing their respective sandwiches.

“Do you want to read it?”

“Desperately,” Niall says with a laugh.

Harry hands over the pad and Niall squints down at the messy script.

_Niall pulled Harold into his orbit easily, and Harold was more than happy to comply. Things with Niall felt simple, but not simplistic. The boisterous and confident nature of his kindness, quite at odds and yet complimentary to Harold’s own quiet kindness, inspired Harold. He was effortless with his enthusiasm for life in all the ways Harold wished he could be. Like he knew how to perfectly balance the good with the bad, to let the power of his gratefulness grow greater than any disappointment in the world could._

Harry would add more to the growing list of things he likes about Niall that the narrator can’t possibly touch on. Like his willingness to accept things he doesn’t understand. How in the face of absolute insanity, Niall takes everything in stride. It’s different than Liam, sure, who also seems somewhat willing to take Harry seriously. Niall would go to battle with you, even if it wasn’t his fight. 

Niall nods when he’s done, handing the pad back to Harry with a light smile. “Thanks,” he says quietly, but it feels like something greater.

Harry nods and eats.

It’s sort of a strange way to let someone become your friend, he thinks, letting them read something like this. Niall has been accepting enough of Harry’s admittedly ridiculous situation, but Harry’s not sure if Niall believes him necessarily. He could think they were just Harry’s words, which Harry wouldn’t mind. He believes in the narrator’s words just as much as he would if he had said them. He’s building trust, and trust isn’t something Harry is used to sharing.

“Do you like football?” Niall asks.

“Not even a little.”

“Harry. _Harry_. Football is everything.”

“No.”

“In the hierarchy of life, it goes food, then football, then breathing.”

“Absolutely not.”

They chat absently and easily. Harry is content.

_In the back of his mind, Harold remembered this was what it felt like to have a friend. To connect without expectation or pressure or fear. To sow the seeds of respect that would flower into trust and care. It comforted Harold so completely that he didn’t take the time to wonder how it would all come crashing down, as it usually did_.

Harry is stopped in front of the office building, perched on two different steps. He doesn’t want to write this down.

“All right, Harry?” Niall asks, trying not to look concerned.

Harry nods and throws an easy smile on his face.

He doesn’t hear the voice the entire ride to Liam’s university later in the early evening, so he notes that down too.

Liam is waiting for him under the tree. “Did you count the cars in the car park on your way in?” Liam asks by way of a greeting.

Harry purses his lips. “No.”

“Did you harmonize with the sounds of honking cars on your bus ride over here?”

“Liam.”

“How many branches are on this tree?”

“Thirty-four,” Harry says with a measure of sarcasm bordering on impolite.

Liam widens his eyes a little. “Really?”

“No.”

He makes an impatient face at Harry before pulling the little black notebook out of his bag. “I have designed a test of sorts to determine what sort of character you are, which will indicate what sort of story you’re in. The questions are going to seem unrelated, but I need you to be honest. No secrets, yeah?”

“No secrets,” Harry promises.

“To confirm, your narrator is male, contemporary voice, British, knows the city?”

“Yes.”

“He doesn’t talk about you as if he’s a character directly involved in your life?”

“No.”

“He hasn’t asked you to commit any crimes?”

“No.”

“Have any of your relatives gifted you ordinary looking jewelry before disappearing into the night, never to be seen again?”

“What?”

Liam gives the impatient look again and just waits.

“No.”

“Have you spoken to a god? Keep in mind they may have been disguised.”

“How would I know, if they were in disguised?”

Liam shakes his head. “Have you ever felt yourself at the mercy of fate or a particular foretold destiny?”

Harry gives this one thought. Of course every one sort of wonders about free will and destiny and all, at the very least in university when one takes that ill-advised Intro to Philosophy class that has nothing to do with any sort of practical degree. Before deciding the question is too scary to think of and they put it away for the rest of their lives, in a dark part of the mind, never to be prodded at again.

“No more than the normal person,” Harry answers, hoping that conveys enough.

“Have you met anyone strange or out of the ordinary recently?”

“You.”

“Respect the test, Harry.”

“I guess not.”

“Do you solve crimes in your spare time?”

“Liam,” Harry says with a groan.

“Crimes, Harry, do you solve them?”

“No,” Harry says levelly.

“Are there any people who don’t like you? Do people feel any animosity toward you?”

“I work for the HMRC. Nobody likes me.” Even if he is never anything but pleasant, Harry constantly finds himself the object of scorn. Occupational hazard, he hopes, and not indicative of something deeper.

“Fair point,” Liam concedes. “Do you suspect that there is anyone at this moment trying to kill you?”

“Other than the voice in my head?”

“Do you have or have you ever had amnesia?”

“This is ridiculous, Liam. What do these questions have to do with anything?”

“I am ruling out the type of protagonist you are. From this information alone, I’ve determined you are not Jay Gatsby, the narrator from _Fight Club_ , Frodo Baggins, a handful of characters from Greek literature, Sherlock Holmes, Jason Bourne, or Harry Potter. Are you not relieved to know you’re not Harry Potter?”

“Not really.”

Liam nods in sympathy. “Harry Potter would be pretty ace. With the magic and all.”

The questions continue in increasing strangeness. Harry learns that he is also not a character from Shakespeare, Dickens, or Austen. He’s not Ahab, Odysseus, or Ned Stark. The list goes on.

Harry, it turns out, appears to be only Harry.

“Is there anything else you can do?” Liam asks.

“What do you mean?”

“Besides hearing the voice.”

“Ehm. I’m really good at figures.”

“You don’t hear other voices? Perhaps other people’s voices? Perhaps other’s thoughts?”

“I’m not a superhero, Liam,” Harry says for the third time that day.

“Can’t be too thorough,” Liam says innocently and closes the notebook. “Now, the next part of the puzzle would be to figure out what kind of story you’re in. At the basest level, you’ve got comedies and tragedies. Comedies end in marriage, tragedies end in death, generally speaking. I’m sorry, but yours appears to be a tragedy.”

“Thanks. I guess,” Harry says quietly.

“Are you familiar with the six Aristotelian elements of tragedy?”

“I am not.”

“They are plot, character, thought, diction, music, and spectacle. I would like for you to outline each of these elements in your life, how they appear to fit into your story. From there, we can try to use some context clues to determine what path you may be on and how we might change or avoid your tragic ending, should we be able to. To confirm, you should also keep a running list, or a tally of sorts, so we can effectively determine whether you’re in a tragedy.”

Harry pulls out his legal pad and jots down what he thinks is the correct spelling of Aristotelian and the list of elements and the definitions as Liam gives them. They plan to have Harry lay low for the next three days, not doing anything that might constitute “advancing the plot” until Monday, where Harry will presumably then resume working and his much-narrator-discussed burgeoning relationship with one Mr. Louis Tomlinson.

\--

Harry can’t lay low, he has a job to do. He goes to the bakery Friday instead because it’s expected of him and he’s a professional.

_When Harold arrived at the Uprising at precisely 10.00 Friday morning, he was met with what he imagined was disappointment on the face of the baker, which cooled instantly into his customary icy glare. It shook Harold to his core, but he stood resolute, determined to maintain what he considered was his trademark pleasantness and professionalism._

“Good morning,” Harry says.

“No,” Louis says and all of the good will built up from their Wednesday night meeting seems to have evaporated from existence.

“Right,” Harry answers, refusing to be flustered. “I’ll just need your financial records for the last four years. I can set you up for the 27%--”

“26.53%.”

“Of course, 26.53% that you need to pay back and I’ll be out of your hair by the end of the day.”

Louis blinks lazily. “I won’t pay it.”

“You have to pay it.”

“I don’t _have_ to do anything.”

“Well, what if I asked really nicely?” he says with a smile that turns Louis’ face just a little closer to anger.

Louis turns on his heel, rounds the counter, and pushes through an Employees Only door. Harry takes the hint and follows him to climb the cramped stairs to a small office. Louis bows with great sarcasm and gestures to the wooden desk shoved in the corner.

As Harry takes a seat in the rickety chair, Louis crosses to a large filing cabinet. He rapidly pulls pages out, flinging them up over his shoulder faster than Harry can process.

Harry stupidly watches the pages flutter down slowly to the ground. “What are you doing?” he asks even though he knows, it’s quite obvious.

Louis silently finishes his work, emptying half the cabinet, and Harry has no choice but to let him. Professionalism and pleasantness. _Professionalism and pleasantness_. He could say something. Anything. Stop? Don’t do that? Please?

“That’ll be about four years, then,” Louis says and leaves, stomping over the fallen files and receipts that have completely covered the floor.

Harry looks helplessly to the floor for a minute before sliding out of the chair to start working.

_Harold sings quietly to himself, sure the rhythm of the music would set him into a good rhythm for working. His eyes strained to read by the minimal amount of light the single lamp on the desk gave as he sorted by month and year and transaction. By tea-time, some four hours later, Harold had straightened the chaos somewhat into manageable piles and decided it was time for a break._

“Thank you,” he moans, falling back on the floor for a few moments, his back aching with the hours of hunching over.

_He wandered downstairs in search of the toilets and was not at all hopeful for a glance of Louis Tomlinson hard at work. Harold was surprised to find the bakery bustling, the large crowd at odds with its usual relaxed, and rather vacant, atmosphere. Louis looked swamped but patient in the face of what looked like a large tourist group. Behind him, a tray of biscuits threatened to burn in the oven._

_Harold felt the familiar tug to help as he observed from the doorway. Customers waited to the side for unfilled orders and were beginning to look agitated. Harold made the decision without putting much thought to it. He couldn’t not help._

Harry rounds the corner and carefully removes the tray of biscuits and shuts off the oven. He sets the tray on the island, carefully balancing the hot metal on his oven mitts.

Louis stares openly at him, all customers forgotten.

“I’ve got the till if you’ll get everything else,” Harry says and Louis stares more. “I worked at a bakery as a kid and I’m quite good with money. I have several references from the HMRC if you want to check.”

Louis sighs and still says nothing, which frustrates Harry only a little. Even though, Louis moves to the side and starts working on outstanding orders. Harry sheds his jacket and turns to the waiting customers with a smile.

It’s easy and calming work, despite the impatience clouding the room. He hands out change and grabs pastries where he can, glad to find everything meticulously labeled. He is aware Louis has eyes on him at all times.

The first time Louis says anything to Harry, it’s to shout about a customer asking for coffee. “I will not allow coffee in my house. We’re tea only and you can fuck right off to Starbucks if that’s a problem,” he snaps.

Harry turns back to the wide-eyed customer. “Apparently it’s just tea,” he says as pleasantly as he can manage.

“Tea sounds great,” the customer chokes out.

_Together they cleared the crowd in eight minutes. Harold enjoyed the steady hum of the crowd, the rhythmic dinging of the cash register. He enjoyed above all the dance he and Louis found themselves tangled in, maneuvering seamlessly around each other to the tune of the Uprising._

Harry looks to Louis as the last customer is taken care of. “That was fun,” he says.

Louis stands in silence again, and Harry isn’t sure if the silence is worse than the biting remarks. So much for filling up the Diction portion of his list.

“I’ll just,” he starts, motioning upstairs. He backs away, all thoughts of the toilets long gone.

“You sing,” Louis says quietly.

Harry turns, eyes wide in embarrassment. “When I’m concentrating sometimes, yeah. I apologize, I didn’t realize you could hear it down here.”

“You can’t,” Louis says and hesitates before gathering some dishes and moving to the sink.

Harry figures the conversation is over and trudges back upstairs, unsure how to unpack Louis Tomlinson. _You can’t._ _You can’t._ Harry kind of wants the words to echo in his brain forever. But he’s stretching, he admits, if he’s finding the words _you_ and _can’t_ to be anything particularly indicative of a burgeoning attraction. Not when he’s got hours’ worth of angry glares and harsh words to combat him.

He pulls out his legal pad and moves to the character page for Louis. He writes _antagonist?_ under the section dedicated to speculating on his role.

He dives back into the paperwork, carefully sorting and labeling the piles with post-it notes and beginning to crunch numbers and cross reference data. He knows he’s lost hours just doing this, and even then he seems to work especially slow. The voice tells him he’s dawdling intentionally to spend more time with a particular baker. Harry will not dignify that with a response.

The sun has gone down by the time Harry finishes for the day, unsure of where the day went. He’s slightly embarrassed to have stayed so late, but Louis never came to kick him out. He wonders for a brief moment if he has been forgotten.

_The shop looked at peace, resting with half of the lights off. The baker leaned over the island, carefully putting the finishing touches of decoration on a half dozen cupcakes. The intense focus of decoration suited him. Harold was hesitant to break the peace with his low tones._

“I apologize for staying so late,” Harry says, startling the other from his concentration.

Louis seems to soften after a moment, his features looking far more open than they had been to date. “Cupcake?”

_Harold was always so surprised by how high Louis’ voice was, always so delighted when it was directed at him light and kind. He always looked sharp to Harold, like any part of him was dangerous if you got near it. But here in the bakery after hours with the simple word “cupcake” on his lips, he looked soft and safe and Harold was hopelessly affected by it._

“They look delicious,” Harry admits, thinking, as instructed, about softness and safety and Louis.

“Have one.” He plucks one from the pile, and it’s the best looking one as far as Harry is concerned. He walks it over to Harry where he stands on the other side of the counter.

“Oh, no, that’s okay, but thank you,” he says quietly.

“I’m offering you a cupcake,” Louis says, politely bewildered. It’s a good look on him.

“I really shouldn’t.” But he wants to, he really wants to.

“Eat the fucking cupcake, Harold.”

“Okay.” He approaches, taking the offered treat. “Also it’s Harry. Not Harold, so,” he adds as an afterthought, hoping this time it will catch. He knows it won’t.

He tries to take a large bite to keep the amount of frosting in perfect ratio with the amount of cake. He ends up smearing a healthy amount of the frosting on his face, but it’s worth it because the cupcake explodes happiness into his mouth. All thick, rich chocolate cake and creamy mint frosting, lightly dusted with the tiniest chocolate chips.

He tries to keep it cool, but a groan of satisfaction in the back of his throat betrays him, causing Louis’ eyes to light up.

“Yeah?” Louis asks.

“Yeah,” Harry confirms, wiping at his nose and licking his fingers. Louis’ face pulls into a satisfied smile and Harry loses himself for a moment in it. “There aren’t words.”

“I had some extra batter left over. I like to bake for fun sometimes.” He’s leaned over the counter again, making that trapezoid Harry enjoys so well.

Harry gathers his courage. He’s going to make this work if it’s the last thing he does. He doesn’t think about how it could be the last thing he does.

“How did you start baking?” That’s a success, Harry thinks, trying not to breath out a sigh of relief. A perfectly normal question for a perfectly normal person.

“My mum,” Louis says, moving to pour tea into two mugs. “She baked all the time, tried to teach me her tricks when I was a kid. I was a terrible student. Something about being unable to follow the rules.”

“That’s a complete surprise to me,” Harry says with a smile. He tries not to get all giddy excited because a simple, pleasant conversation is occurring.

Louis laughs sarcastically but his eyes are bright. He hands Harry a mug before he hops up on the counter. Harry settles into a squishy sofa he had eyed earlier and was desperate to try out.

“It’s all about following the instructions, baking, or everything goes wrong. Everything went wrong more often than not, but she was always so patient. And those were always the best afternoons, the two of us making a complete mess of the kitchen and coming out with the best treats. It was something that was just… ours.” Harry watches carefully the hand that rubs the back of his neck, wishing he could do it for Louis. Louis then curls both hands around his mug and holds it close to him, though not taking a sip. “Anyway, fast forward a bit, my dad is a solicitor, so I was supposed to be a solicitor and solicitors don’t bake. And. Um. Halfway through my third semester of law school, my mum died.”

_Louis frowns into his mug and Harold fights the impulse to reach for him. He feels the weight of Louis’ words sinking into his chest, the wall between them falling slowly, brick by brick. Harold thinks maybe this time, he’ll be able to reach him._

“I went home for the funeral and all and found her recipe book when we were cleaning out her things. She had stopped baking in her last years, the sicker she got. I had sisters who were too young to even remember she baked, and. I just. I had to show them. It was her legacy, you know? I started baking things in the book, everything, lemon squares and pastries and biscuits and pies, just everything in the book, all for the girls. I refused to leave home until I made every damn thing with perfection, and the girls and I were healing. Because then mum was always going to be there.”

_Louis smiled fondly into his mug then, his eyes squinting as if to shield themselves from the brightness of the memory. Harold breathed a little easier, seeing the ghost of happiness dance around the baker._

“Took me a while to get the hang of it. The girls and I suffered through some truly horrendous creations, and pie crust is a real bitch, let me tell you. But I’m stubborn—my mum would have said I’m _determined_ —but I’m stubborn. So I worked at it until it was perfect. And I loved it. Felt like coming home. I was happier baking than I was at law school in any case. And the more my dad told me I needed to stop, leave home and go back to school, the more I became determined to do something with it. So. Eventually. Bakery.”

Louis shrugs and purses his lips in a little action that says to Harry _it is what it is_. Harry stares this time, careful and considerate.

“This is the best cupcake I’ve ever had,” Harry says. “You certainly have talent, even if it wasn’t, well. Natural talent.”

“Thank you.” He pulls an uneven smile. “Are you going to have more than one bite of it?”

Harry frowns. “I shouldn’t.”

“Why ever not?” Louis says with a cocked eyebrow.

“I don’t eat sweets. Or sugar. Most breads. That kind of thing.”

Louis raises the other eyebrow and gapes at Harry. “You used to work in a bakery but you don’t eat sweets?”

“I haven’t had a cupcake since I was sixteen.” He’s tugging at his bottom lip now, a terrible nervous habit he’s been unable to kick.

“What the actual fuck, Harold. You can’t just go through your life without cupcakes.”

Louis is staring at him the incredulous intensity of about seven thousand suns and for a brief moment, Harry thinks maybe he’ll eat every cupcake in the world if Louis told him to. And then he regains his cool.

“Well. I do.”

“Why did you swear them off?” Louis places a hand to his chest. “You’re not allergic, are you? I haven’t poisoned you? I swear, that’s too drastic a measure to avoid an audit, even for me.”

“They’re bad for you,” Harry says with a shrug.

“For your body, maybe, but not for your _soul_.”

“At the bakery, I used to eat all the pastries just this side of stale. The ones we couldn’t sell. I ate everything. But my parents got mad and said it was bad for me and that I shouldn’t eat them, so. I stopped.”

“What do you have with your morning tea?”

“A banana?”

“Sacrilegious,” Louis all but shouts.

Harry shrugs again. Louis jumps off the counter and begins to place the cupcakes into a small box with little cupcake holders.

“You owe it to yourself to take these home and eat every single one. Ideally not all at once, but I’ll understand if you must.”

“I can’t.” But he wants to.

“Yes, you can. Live a little.”

“I can’t take them. I’m sorry.” He really wants to.

“Look, you are almost too thin to exist. You have a dietary responsibility to not blow away in the wind. Take the fucking cupcakes, Harold.”

“I can’t take them,” he repeats, a little manic. If management found out, honestly, that Harry was even sitting here having a conversation after hours, that Harry was sort of hoping Louis was flirting with him, that Harry was behaving unprofessionally…

“It’s against the rules,” Harry explains. “If I take them, it’s considered a gift, which could then be misconstrued as a bribe.”

Louis narrows his eyes. “So don’t tell anyone. I won’t if you don’t.”

Harry shakes his head, exasperated. He grapples for a suitable solution. “I’ll purchase them.”

_Louis walled up faster than Harold had seen him do before. He became a statue etched with no expression, which was honestly worse than the anger or resentment Harold was used to at this point. Harold wanted so desperately do right by Louis’ generosity, but this look suggested he was not going to succeed._

Oh no, oh no, Harry thinks.

“Excuse me?” Louis says, his voice dropping dangerously.

“I’ll pay for them. I’d be happy to,” Harry insists, thinking he’ll prove the narrator wrong. If he’s nice enough, if he’s open enough, Louis will see he’s speaking in earnest.

“Pay for them,” he repeats blandly.

“Yes.” Harry fishes for his wallet. “They won’t be a gift. It won’t be inappropriate.”

“God knows I couldn’t stomach any more _inappropriate_ behavior from you,” he snaps.

Harry grimaces, dropping his eyes down to glue to the mug in his left hand. He apologizes again and it’s just another in a long list of idiot things Harry has said and done to Louis in the name of infatuation.

“What if it was just payment for helping me out today?” Louis suggests.

Thoughts of management spring to Harry’s mind again. The image of Harry getting caught at the register of someone he’s supposed to audit stops his heart for a moment. He can’t get fired, certainly not from the government. He’d never work again. Everything he’d spent his whole life working for would mean nothing.

“I shouldn’t even have done that; that could have gotten me fired.”

“So why did you?” Louis’ voice cut sharp in accusation.

“I just… couldn’t not help you.” Harry shrugs helplessly under the weight of the truth.

They stare each other down in silence.

“How much are they?” Harry finally says.

“They’re not for sale. Good night, Mr. Styles.” Louis turns away.

Harry hesitates for a moment before collecting his briefcase in defeat. He leaves his mug on the counter but still clutches at the semi-eaten cupcake in one hand. At the door, he turns around, considering the carefully decorated cupcakes and the too-conveniently-placed cupcake box and how Louis closed over half an hour ago.

“You made those for me, didn’t you?”

Louis, as expected, says nothing.

“I’m sure this doesn’t make any sense to you, but… I think I’m definitely in a tragedy,” Harry admits. He hates having expressed it, but the confession bursts forth nonetheless. Louis squares his shoulder and continues to sit in silence until Harry pushes out into the street.

_Harold wanted to storm down in the street in a fury, but he couldn’t do anything more than amble with resignation._

“Yeah? Fat lot of good you were in there,” Harry tells the voice sharply.

_Harold steadily plopped one foot in front of the other, a steady mindless rhythm, pulled forward not by a desire to go home but by fate. Fate pulled him onto his bus and fate drove him home._

Harry steadily, mindlessly bangs his forehead against the window of the bus. He doesn’t look at anything and he doesn’t listen to anything besides the soft thumps of his endless frustration.

_Harold didn’t know he was bound by fate. If one had asked Harold, he would have said he was bound by the need to do the right thing. He needed to make the right decisions, take the correct paths. Even if it meant straying from what he wanted more than anything. There was a formula to success in life, he knew, and he followed it as best he could_.

When Harry flops down on his bed at last, he goes face first, still fully clothed. He pulls a pillow over his head in a fruitless attempt to drown out the voice.

_Regardless of choices made, Harold found himself inevitably pulled toward his death. His steady, dependable job at Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. His sensible, reasonably priced flat. The pace at which he completed his morning routine. Everything would come together, as orchestrated by fate, to ultimately result in his death._

Harry screams into his pillow until his voice runs raw.

\--

It’s a couple of hours until midnight and Harry refuses to sleep. He wants to fight, but he doesn’t know how. He wants to reach out, but he doesn’t know who to.

All he can do is call the only person who knows everything.

“Liam, I’m going to die,” Harry’s tear-stained voice croaks before Liam really has time to say hello.

“Harry?”

“He says it’s fate and it’s inevitable and he’s going to kill me, Liam, he’s going to kill me soon,” Harry says with desperation, feeling like a child. His pillow is likely gasping for air at how tight Harry has it clutched.

“Where are you?” Liam says firmly.

Harry hears rustling on the other end and the sound of Liam’s voice starts to pull him up. “M’flat.” He wipes at his face, a little embarrassed. This isn’t Liam’s problem, it’s quite rude of Harry to sit this on him.

“Text me your address. I’m coming over. I need you to stay put and don’t do anything stupid.”

Harry breathes for a few moments, slowly calming himself. “No, it’s fine, I apologize. I was just having a moment.”

“Do you want me to come over? Because I will. Have you finished your assignment?”

Harry considers for a moment but his mouth still says, “Yes.”

“Brilliant. Office hours. And then we’ll get pissed, yeah?”

When Liam arrives with a bottle of bourbon and a timid smile, Harry almost loses it again. Liam peruses Harry’s legal pad of notes with a neutral face. He sets down the pad and fixes Harry with a sad look.

“Oh god, what is it?” Harry asks low, his hands clutching desperately at the untouched glass of bourbon.

“It’s definitely a tragedy, Harry.”

“I knew it,” he says, hanging his head.

“But I don’t think this guy, Louis—” he says with the s.

“Lou-ee,” he corrects instinctively.

“Whatever,” Liam says with a quirked eyebrow. “I don’t think he’s just your antagonist. I think he’s your object of unrequited love.”

“My what? I’m not in love with him,” he says instantly.

“The narrator seems to think you are.” Liam flips a page. “ _Louis smiled fondly into his mug then, his eyes squinting as if to shield themselves from the brightness of the memory._ Did you copy that down in the middle of his tragic back story or did you remember that word for word?” he says with a measure of sarcasm Harry doesn’t enjoy.

Harry is caught, though. He had written it down twenty minutes ago while waiting for Liam. He admits nothing. “The narrator says loads of nice things about Niall.” He knocks back the contents of his glass in one gulp, which he immediately regrets. It tastes absolutely disgusting.

“Ah,” Liam says, flipping to the Niall page, “yes, Niall. The narrator also uses the word friend like seventeen times. The narrator has effectively friendzoned the bloke.”

Harry makes a face. “There’s no such thing as the friendzone,” he says, pouring himself another healthy-sized portion of the poison.

“All right, fine, but if there was, Niall would be the bloody prime minister.”

“Well, maybe I should see if things could work with Niall. Just to throw a wrench in his plans.”

Liam looks highly unimpressed at Harry’s deflection. Harry admits it’s weak. Things with Niall are easy and things with Louis are _hard_ and Harry finds himself wondering more often than not if it’s even worth it. But he doesn’t feel the same thing with Niall. He’s not attracted to him, which is important on some level. But he doesn’t see Niall the way he sees Louis. He doesn’t want to immerse himself in every aspect of his life, find out how he ticks, or yearn to be understood by him. It’s Louis he stays up late at night thinking about, Louis who connects with Harry with intimate stories. They click. When they’re not at odds with each other, that is.

He wants everything from Louis.

“I’m not in love with Louis,” he repeats.

“Not yet,” Liam responds, pointing a purposeful finger at which Harry rolls his eyes.

“And even if I was, what’s the point? If I’m just going to die, what’s the point of doing this to me?”

“It’s tragedy, Harry. He’s going to hate you until the end and love you just before you die. It’s poetic. I’d read it.”

“That’s bullshit,” Harry says, taking another drink. “I apologize for swearing.”

“No, you’re right. It is bullshit,” Liam admits. They clink glasses and drink.

It is two hours before Harry feels like standing is probably the worst idea he could have. His face is half-buried in his sofa.

“I’m not in love with him,” he says for the eighth time that night.

“Okay, Harry,” Liam mumbles.

“I am infatuated with him. It is very inconvenient. And inappropriate. That’s me in a nutshell about him, inappropriate. He gets so mad when I say inappropriate.” Harry considers the word, sloshing it around in his mouth, “In-appro-pri-ut.”

“You’ll probably die before he makes a move, so I’m sure you’re fine.”

“Heeey,” Harry whines into his throw pillow.

“Honestly, it’s probably for the best. He seems like a real prick.”

“He is not a prick! He’s prickly, maybe. But sensitive and charming and irritating and frustrating and stubborn and brilliant and beautiful and stuff.”

“He treats you like shit.”

“That’s just how he’s written.” There’s that moment with the cupcake Harry continues to linger on, the conversation on the train, thinking that _that’s_ who Louis is beneath the anger. Harry pauses, considering how he’s written, before bolting up in his seat, making his head rush and his stomach turn over. “What if he’s not real?”

“What do you mean?” Liam frowns.

“What if he’s just the narrator’s creation? What if he only exists when I’m around? What if his mum and his sisters don’t actually exist? What if I don’t exist? What if all of this, everything in my life I’ve known is a lie?” Harry is nearly shouting in hysteria. “What if this is _The Truman Show_? _The Harold Show_? You know, because he calls me Harold.”

“This isn’t _The Truman Show_ , Harry.”

He points accusingly. “That’s exactly what someone on _The Truman Show_ would say.”

“Harry. You’re real. Because you’re with me and I’m real. I’m not part of the story, remember?” Liam reaches over and sets a hand on Harry’s knee for a moment.

“Yeah, I guess.” Harry slumps back into the sofa roughly.

Liam looks thoughtful. “Tell me something about you that has nothing to do with the story.”

“Ehm,” Harry considers, “my favorite number is pi, because, I dunno, it goes on forever? But only sometimes. It's like an infinite puzzle or really very simple, depending how you look at it, because one way, it's clean, 22 over 7, but when you work it out, it's 3.1415926 and so on.”

“When I went to university, I shaved my hair off because I thought it would make me look older and cooler. Instead I looked like a potato,” Liam shares. “Another.”

“My mum has a video of me singing and dancing like Elvis for a school talent show when I was nine.”

“I have a collection of 348 comic books.”

“I saw Mick Jagger in a restaurant five years ago and I peed my pants a little when he looked at me.”

Liam laughs loudly, and Harry has no choice but to join in. “You’re definitely real. I’m going to come hug you now. I will probably be awkward, but I’m making an effort.”

Harry reaches out his arms gamely and Liam falls into them. It’s a little awkward but mostly peaceful.

“You don’t think I’m crazy, do you?” Harry says into Liam’s hair.

“Honestly? I really don’t know.”

Harry groans.

“What? Would you rather I lie?” Liam looks up at him before rolling off and settling close to him on the sofa.

“Yes. Tonight, yes, lie.”

“Fine. No, Harry, I am 100% convinced your mental faculties are fully functional.”

Harry sighs and closes his eyes. They sit in sleepy silence.

“He’s real. I’m sure of that.”

“Prove it,” Harry mumbles as he drifts off to sleep.

The next morning, Harry paces the kitchen with too much energy for the hangover he’s nursing.

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” Liam says quietly.

“I can,” Harry says, equally quiet. He holds one hand to his aching head and holds his phone in the other.

“You should have come with me, you coward.”

“If I came with you, how could I empirically prove he’s real? My presence could skew the result.”

“That’s a really fancy way to dress up the fact that you’re a coward.”

Harry pops a few painkillers and downs a large glass of water as Liam walks on in silence. Harry hears the sound of a door opening and the soft sounds of Louis’ music of the revolution.

“Is he there?” Harry all but whispers. He can hear Liam breathing but saying nothing for too many moments.

“Um. No. It’s. Harry, it’s a girl. Are you quite certain Louis wasn’t a girl?”

“Yes, I’m quite certain Louis wasn’t a girl.”

“Well, there is only one person behind the counter.”

“Maybe he’s in the office. Go ask her.”

“Haaaarry,” Liam groans.

“Liiiiaaam,” Harry mimics.

Liam sighs, resigned. “Damn it. Keep quiet.” There is a little bit of rustling on the other end of the phone. “Excuse me, is Louis Tomlinson here?” he asks the lady, his voice somewhat far away.

“No, he takes the weekends off,” she answers and Harry almost exclaims in relief. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“Ah, perhaps you can,” Liam says primly. Harry can almost see Liam adjusting his glasses. “He’s currently being audited, yes?”

“ _Liam_ ,” Harry shouts but wonders if he can even be heard.

“Are you from the HMRC?” the lady asks.

“Yes, we have to do checks to make sure our auditors are actually out in the field as they say they are. Random spot checks and such, nothing too serious,” Liam lies spectacularly.

Harry lightly bangs his head against the kitchen wall. What is Louis going to think when this lady tells him about Liam?

“Yes, there is someone coming by for an audit during the week.”

“Do you know his name or can you tell me anything about him?”

“I’ve not met him. But I hear he’s really tall and has really green eyes and really curly hair.”

“That’s me,” Harry identifies, gleeful to hear at least Louis was talking about him.

“Excellent, thank you. You’ve been very helpful…”

“Eleanor.”

“Thank you, Eleanor.”

There is more rustling and then Liam is talking into the phone again. “That’s a minor character you’ve never met confirming your existence and his existence. I think we’re in the clear.”

“It’s illegal to impersonate a government official,” Harry scolds. “However poorly you did it.”

“It’s so strange how your words of gratitude sound almost like a complaint.”

“Thank you, Liam.”

“You’re welcome, Harry. But never again.”

Harry falls into his couch. “He’s real.”

“Completely real. Ready to be the object of your affection.”

“I don’t want to fall in love with him.”

“Then don’t.”

“Oh, okay then. Allow me to power down my emotions.” Harry makes several entertaining beeping noises, none of which Liam seems to appreciate.

“You’re in a mood this morning.”

Harry sighs and rubs his face. “What do I do?”

“Don’t advance the plot. Stay home. Take any number of your thousand vacation days. Don’t go to him, don’t go to work, don’t do anything.”

“Don’t advance the plot,” Harry repeats like a mantra.

“If the plot doesn’t go anywhere, nothing can happen to you.”

Harry chokes a little laugh out. Great, he thinks, nothing will happen to me. He’ll just sit in his flat for the rest of his life not letting anything happen to him.

“I’m scared, Liam. I’m really scared.”

“I know,” he says softly. “I’m going to help you fix this. Don’t advance the plot.”

\--

Harry is very good at following instructions. Unbelievably good, even.

Monday morning, after an entire weekend of sitting around and watching television and _laying low_ , his traitorous wristwatch cheerfully chirps its _dee-dee-dee-deet_ at 7.15. He glares at it, but the wristwatch doesn’t waver. He should call out sick. He should take that spontaneous vacation.

But he feels the familiar tug of responsibility in his brain. Also he’s not above admitting it at this point: he wants to see Louis Tomlinson.

“I am going to regret this,” Harry confirms aloud and turns off his alarm.

He stares at his reflection in the mirror. _He’s got really curly hair_ , echoes out to Harry. Two out of three times he’s seen Louis, he’s had his hair properly combed. But he’s identified by his bed head. He runs a hand through it and pledges to leave it alone.

And he brushes his teeth with reckless abandon, without care to tempo or the appropriate amount of brushes per tooth.

He throws on a suit and picks out the bow tie that compliments his really green eyes, or so the shop clerk had promised him when he purchased it years ago.

He jogs to the bus, finding himself again a minute and a half before the bus instead of arriving just on time. He wonders what’s happened to the dependability of the public transit system.

He putters around the office for a few hours before heading to the Uprising. He wonders if he’s advancing the plot, considering the narrator has been silent all morning.

Before entering the bakery, he steals himself for the worst. Louis glances up at him as he approaches the counter. Harry likes to think Louis spends a little more time looking up at his hair this morning.

“Good morning,” Harry says, but the smile he finds himself giving is a little less than genuine.

Louis cocks an eyebrow and waves his hand lazily in the direction of the Employees Only door before focusing on his work. Harry says nothing. He nods and walks up to the office, half-expecting all of his work to be sabotaged.

The files are safe, still neatly sorted and labeled, and he begins with the records from 2011, parsing through personal records and business records alike. The songs he sings today are a little sadder than usual.

He sees Louis opened the bakery in 2010 and he appears to be the only employee, besides Eleanor, who is recorded as employed on an inconsistent basis. Louis is surviving just a little over breaking even. Harry begins to make a list of suggestions, extraneous expenses he could rid himself of, ideas about growing his business. Just in case.

When his back begins to hurt, he stretches up and spends too much time thinking about going downstairs. So he goes anyway, clomping away in the staircase, and gets in the short line at the counter. Louis gives him a withering look at his turn and it punches Harry in the chest.

“Tea,” Harry says.

“What kind?”

“Surprise me.”

Louis pours and slides a mug of English breakfast at him. “On the house,” he challenges.

_Harold is still buzzed from the embarrassment of his rejection last night and how furiously Louis had reacted._

Harry clenches his jaw at the sudden appearance of the narrator and stares Louis down.

_He wanted desperately to make it right. He could easily accept the mug, forcing Louis’ offer to become an apology. They could become friendly again._

Harry defiantly forces his hand into his pocket and slaps down too many coins on the table. “Keep the change,” he says, snatching his tea and storming upstairs as safely as he could with the steaming mug. The danger of burning himself was really putting a damper on his fuming.

_Harold had never felt so determined to remain calm in his life. Louis was determined to push him to his limit, it seemed. No amount of frustration seemed to overwhelm the affection and desire Harold felt for the baker._

“Shut up, shut up,” Harry chokes out, beginning to panic and not at all feeling the calm the voice promises him. The mug in his hands shakes precariously.

_Louis had latched onto his heart and his mind and in such a short, seemingly impossible amount of time. Harold felt there was no escape._

Harry feels his face getting redder and his eyes getting wetter and he knows that he’s made a huge mistake. He should have listened to Liam.

The door behind him bangs open. “Hey,” Louis shouts, “ _you_ don’t get to be mad at _me_.”

Harry won’t turn around. He won’t show Louis what he’s done.

“What the fuck is your problem?” Louis demands.

Harry sets down the untouched mug on the desk. He tucks his head down and tries to squeeze past Louis. Louis catches him by the arm, but jerks his hand away almost instantly. His face falls from anger to surprise as he leans forward to get a better view of Harry’s face.

“I have to go, please pardon me,” Harry says numbly and pushes past Louis with no resistance.

“Wait,” Harry hears Louis say after a moment before hearing the sounds of Louis bounding down the stairs after him. Harry almost doesn’t hear him over the narrator detailing the intricacies of his broken heart.

“Harry, wait.”

Harry stops in his tracks and counts to three, reminding himself of all the reasons he shouldn’t turn around. What a manipulative move, he knows, Louis finally playing the Harry card.

He turns around anyway, reason be damned, for just a quick glance to Louis’ face, which is etched in concern.

“Have a good day, Mr. Tomlinson,” Harry says low and leaves.

Don’t advance the plot, he tells himself. Don’t advance the plot.

\--


	4. Chapter 4

“Fuck,” Zayn says for the eighth time Thursday afternoon.

“Use your words,” Perrie intones with a bored voice. She flips the page of the newspaper she’s hiding behind.

“It has been three days and Harold sodding Styles will not go anywhere,” Zayn shouts.

“Thank you for the exposition, but I knew that already.”

“He’s just sitting in his flat watching telly.”

“I wish I was sitting in my flat watching telly,” she deadpans unhelpfully.

“Nobody wants to read about someone sitting in their flat watching telly. It doesn’t advance the plot.”

“Maybe he just really likes Gogglebox.”

Zayn groans and Perrie sets down the newspaper to catch his eye.

“At the risk of you yelling at me some more, I will still state for you the most obvious fact in this situation,” she says lightly. “Are you ready?”

Zayn fixes her with a scowl. Which means yes.

“He’s a fictional character and you’re in control. Make him get off the sofa and turn off the telly and advance the plot. Groundbreaking, I know. You may thank me at any time.”

Zayn shakes his head. “I can write whatever I want, I know that. But it has to be right. It has to have motivation and lead to the appropriate consequences.”

“Well, where is he _supposed_ to go?”

“To his untimely death, ideally,” he says with a flippancy he knows she doesn’t deserve, but at this point he’s too riled up to behave.

Perrie doesn’t get frustrated, she only gets disappointed. “Zayn, I’m trying to help.”

Zayn stands up a little too quickly, knocking his chair over. “I’m being smothered. I can’t breathe in here. I can’t think and you’re just sitting there reading a fucking _newspaper_ like the internet doesn’t bloody exist. I’m sure you think it makes you feel singular, but it’s driving me fucking insane. I can’t do it. You’re fucking with everything.”

Zayn grabs his coat and heads for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“Somewhere I can cultivate a motherfucking aura of mystery,” he snaps.

Zayn slams the door to his studio a little harder than necessary and stomps down the stairs of his building. He lights a cigarette immediately if only mostly out of spite. He can feel Perrie’s judgment from the street.

It’s the first time he’s left the studio in days, and he finds he misses people. Not Perrie, Perrie isn’t people, Perrie is a nuisance. He falls in step with a crowd of commuters.

He gets lost for a while, giving over to the mindless hum of the city. He enjoys the anonymity of crowds. His feet carry him as far as he can go, right into the heart of the touristiest part of London.

Deciding to fulfill the remainder of his own personal cliché, he settles himself into a coffee shop. He arms himself with a simple coffee, a stack of napkins, and a ballpoint pen. Then he settles himself next to the most morose looking people in the shop.

It’s a woman pretending not to cry into her coffee cup as another woman curls up next to her and runs a comforting hand up and down her back. The comforting woman speaks too softly for Zayn to hear, but whatever she says, it seems to be working.

This is what people are for, he thinks. Comfort, support, literal shoulders to cry on. Well, maybe not people. Just friends.

Zayn doesn’t have many friends, but he feels he doesn’t need many. He’s got his characters, but he can’t tell people that, because then people would think he’s mental. But he does have them, Harold and Niall and Louis, and he’s happy to spend his days with them.

He scribbles down a few paragraphs from Louis’ perspective, and he thinks maybe it’d be nice to have an actual person curled up into his side as well.

His phone chirps at him. It’s a text from Your Best Mate Perrie, so she must have stolen his phone to program her number in.

_First of all, you use a typewriter ironically, you pretentious dick. Don’t talk to me about newspapers._

Zayn chuckles and waits for the second of all.

_Second of all, if you can’t remove Harold from the flat, you should remove the flat from Harold_.

Zayn considers this and glances over at the morose pair. They have succeeded in trading small smiles at each other.

The power of friendship, Zayn scoffs silently before catching himself. He supposes there’s nothing actually wrong with that, the success of friendly comfort.

_When did I become so jaded_? he scratches out on a napkin.

Fuck it, he thinks. Niall, you’re up.

\--

“So you’re saying it came in like a wrecking ball?”

“No, Niall, I’m saying it _was_ a wrecking ball.”

“And all it wanted was to break your walls?”

“They said it was an accident, but I’m not convinced. I mean, a construction crew swinging around Clapham, knocking into the wrong buildings?”

“Has anyone told you you’re no fun at all, Harry?”

Harry sighs, propping a hand on his hip and surveying the giant hole where his television _used_ to sit up against the living room wall. “All the time.”

“You doing all right, mate?”

“There’s a giant hole in my flat. My entire DVD collection is strewn across the road.”

“No, I mean you haven’t been to work in three days.”

“Oh. Yeah. I’ve taken some time off. Paul says I needed some mental health days.” Harry laughs into his phone and tries to ignore the level of hysteria in it.

“Shit, do you have anywhere to stay?” Niall says, as though the thought had just sprung into his mind.

“Not yet—”

“Great, come stay with me. Not taking no for an answer.”

“That’s very nice, but—”

“Not taking no for an answer,” he bellows.

“Okay, okay,” Harry concedes, taking a few moments to consider Niall’s timing. “I’m glad you called. It was… decidedly very convenient. Why did you call?”

“I was worried about you,” Niall says without trepidation.

“Oh. Well. Thanks.”

“No problem. See you in five minutes.”

Niall rings off to the sound of Harry’s laughter. He doesn’t want to think anymore, even though he’s convinced the narrator is to blame for this whole situation. If it hadn’t been for the insistent beeping of his wristwatch, Harry might not have even moved out of the way of the blast in time. For all his wristwatch may be doing to ensure his narrator-given death, he did owe it for that one at the very least.

Harry is being punished for avoiding the plot, he’s sure of it. Unless by some miracle, this wrecking ball _was_ his planned death and he narrowly avoided it.

He thinks in circles and it starts to panic him, so he stops. Instead, he snaps a picture of the damage and sends it to Liam with _I think the plot found me._

Liam answers quickly: _holy shit ! r u ok???_

_I’m fine. Narrator wants me to stay with Niall._

_no way stay with me_

Harry shakes his head, though he knows Liam can’t see it. He writes, _I’m tired of fighting. He could just as easily send a construction crew to yours._

_good point stay with neil….. text me so i know your alive_

Harry makes a little irritated face at Liam through the phone before preparing a bag and preparing his flat for leaving. The construction company promised to fix a tarp over the hole in the wall before they come to rebuild it. For a moment, he worries about things in his flat getting damaged in the meantime, but he realizes there really isn’t anything here he cares about.

_Harold left his suits behind in favor of packing his suitcase with casual shirts and jeans that haven’t seen the light of day in years. He took his toothbrush, but not his hair product. He grabbed his remaining two bananas and a few other non-perishables. He adjusted his wristwatch and left the flat without saying goodbye._

Before walking briskly to his bus stop, he glanced up at his building to ensure no other flats were harmed as casualties to his unwillingness to be led slowly to his death by a bodiless voice. He is relieved to find the damage begins and ends with him.

Harry finds the address Niall texted him easily enough, and Niall meets him down at the street, taking one of Harry’s bags in hand to haul it upstairs. Harry thanks him profusely until Niall threatens to punch him if he does so one more time.

_Niall’s flat was quite unlike anything Harold expected. In that it looked more like a music studio than a home. Framed concert posters and sheet music lined the walls. His living room housed an entire bands’ worth of equipment and instruments. It was like Harold had made a pilgrimage to his own personal mecca and he actively salivated._

“Fucking hell,” Harry swears in complete awe, not even taking the time to apologize. His jaw is dropped attractively open.

“I like music,” Niall says easily.

“Yeah,” Harry agrees, running his hand lightly over a keyboard.

“I don’t actually have a spare bed, but this is the comfiest couch in Britain.”

“It’s brilliant,” Harry assures him.

Harry refuses to take no for an answer when he offers to make the two of them dinner, but Niall doesn’t even hesitate a second before agreeing.

“At the risk of you yelling at me some more, I just want to tell you how much I appreciate this,” Harry says over a generous helping of spaghetti.

“I got your back,” Niall says with a nod.

“Why?” Harry blurts before he realizes.

Niall stares at him for a moment. “For someone who puts out so much effort to be good to others, you sure are baffled when somebody reciprocates.”

Harry blinks. “Oh. It’s just…” He shakes his head at his bowl.

“What?”

“Nobody usually reciprocates?” he says like a question, even though it’s a statement of fact. Nobody actually reciprocates. Unless they take the time to bake him cupcakes and tell him intimate stories, and then Harry ruins everything. So that doesn’t really count.

Niall frowns and it doesn’t look good on him. “I don’t get it.”

“I don’t know. Usually other people are just mad. Or indifferent, mostly indifferent. I try not to let it bother me. As long as one of us is making the effort.”

“That’s fucking ridiculous.”

“Agreed.” Harry shrugs. “I suppose.”

“I can’t imagine anyone being mean to you.”

“I can. With a startling amount of detail. There’s this guy—” Harry stops himself short because what he does not need in this instance is to keep bringing up Louis Tomlinson. “Anyway. It’s not a big deal.”

Niall watches him for a moment before nodding and letting it go.

_Harold thought of Louis anyway and how much he really did want to go back and make it right. The thought frustrated him. Who was Louis to Harry that he should worry over the baker, who by all accounts was quite rude? With the exception of the last moment, that deep concern staining his stupidly attractive face._

Did Harry even like him, or was it because the narrator told him so? Did he want him or was it because the narrator told him to? Why was he dedicating an absurd number of hours thinking about him?

This is too complicated, Harry thinks. He just wants to _live_.

“If you knew you were going to die, like really soon, what would you do?”

“Panic, probably,” Niall says with his mouth full.

“No, I mean, what would you do?”

“Am I the richest person in the world?”

“No, why would you be? It’s just you,” Harry says, looking incredulous.

“Dunno, s’pose I’d like to play Croke Park, it’s a stadium back home. Probably can’t do that unless I was really rich.”

“Football?”

“Nah, music. Set me up with my guitar and the sound system and let me go for a few hours. It’d be cool if there were some people there to listen. I’ve always wanted to be a singer, since I was a kid. And playing Croker… that’d be mental.”

“That sounds amazing,” Harry admits.

“What about you? Music?”

“I fancied myself a singer as a kid, terrible garage band, everything. But it wasn’t practical. You can’t just go be a rock star because you want to be. So…”

“You quit?” Niall says with surprise.

“Performing, yeah. But I don’t think you can ever really quit music, like. It’s a part of me,” Harry says quietly, not sure he’s ever vocalized the feeling before.

“Yeah.” Niall nods and Harry knows he gets it. “You should pick it up again.”

Harry laughs. “My band are probably all working in their own boring day jobs. And I don’t think I would want to be a solo artist.”

“We’ll start a band. We’ll be proper rock stars.” Niall laughs, so Harry does too. “But seriously, what would you do?”

And Harry really isn’t sure.

They agree to meet during Niall’s lunch hour the next day. Harry leaves early to casually walk by the bakery and glance hopefully into the windows. He spots his favorite baker sitting at a table and chatting easily with a customer. Louis looks soft again, in his element when he’s connecting with people. Harry likes the little faces he makes when he’s making a joke or cracking a smile.

And now Harry’s gotten to a slightly stalkery level of interest in the baker, so Harry turns away quickly.

By the time he reaches Parliament Square, Niall is still working. Harry doesn’t want to go in, so he walks his usual path to his favorite bench, stopping of course to gaze longingly at the seafoam green Fender electric guitar in the window of the music shop.

And then he really thinks about it. And so does the voice.

_Harold stared at the guitar and the guitar stared back, silently daring him to do something about it._

_So Harold Styles did something about it._

I want this, he thinks to himself as he enters the shop, I deserve this.

_Harold exited the shop twenty minutes later with a gently used acoustic guitar and a less gently used guitar case and some other accessories. He tried not to think about how he almost choked looking at the price of the dream guitar._

Harry nods at the voice, remembering the sensation of shock. Even in spite of everything, Harry is still practical first.

He texts Niall to let him know where to find Harry as he settles onto his bench. He cradles his guitar, practically beaming with excitement.

He plucks at the strings absently, unsure of where to put his left hand—is it on the little lines or in between the little lines? A quick search on his phone sets him in the right direction and he plucks out terrible sounding melodies, simply because he enjoys the sounds of making music.

“It hurts your wrist if you keep your thumb there,” Niall says from above Harry. He adjusts Harry’s left hand to the appropriate position. “Give it a go.”

Harry happily strums out a nonsense chord. “Never had a single lesson!”

“Absolutely hopeless,” Niall says, shaking his head. “You’re lucky I have the patience of a saint when it comes to hopeless cases.”

_Harold and Niall spent most of the weekend slaving over guitars, Harold filled with a newfound--or at least newly acknowledged--determination to jump back into music with both feet. He was slow but determined to get it exactly right. He was delighted when he thought he saw the beginnings of little calluses on his fingers, but it was probably his imagination._

_The music came back to Harold easily, like it was an intrinsic part of him that he had just forgotten to utilize in the last decade. When he sang, he felt lighter, like all of his cares and stresses and problems evaporated for the length of a song. He felt like music could save a life—save his life, remind him of the difference between living and existing._

_The music of existence—the slow, steady movements of his routine that his wristwatch so dutifully and sadly orchestrated—had served him well enough. But the music of living—the improvised jolts of laughter, the easy rhythm of friendly chatter, the thrum of happiness coursing through his veins—fulfilled him in a way he had forgotten was possible._

_That weekend the band that made up Harold’s life was coming together, it just seemed to be missing a few instrumental pieces._

They sing, study music, golf, joke, and eat far too much. Harry thinks it’s the most fun he’s had in years. It’s almost like being liberated. He’s always had weekends free and open to himself, but he’s never actually done anything about it. He’s never minded being alone, but he thinks maybe he’s spoiled for that now. The company is too good, Niall is too good.

Harry takes what he wants all weekend, and it’s the closest he’s felt to having what is most important to him—freedom. Even if the narrator seems to be ever present, the narrator seems to be okay with going along with every crazy or just purely fun thing Harry wants to do. It goes pretty well and Harry only locks himself in Niall’s bathroom once to cry when everything becomes a little too much to handle.

He’s in the middle of a story of how paper is made, the process he’d seen on television a few hours ago. As always, he struggles to pay attention with the narrator constantly breathing down his neck. Metaphorically. Especially when the narrator is now espousing rhetoric on exactly how Niall’s eyes seem to glass over, zoning out at the sound of Harry’s slow, lumbering voice.

“Do I talk slowly?” he asks, interrupting himself.

“Yeah, mate. Glaciers move faster than you talk,” Niall says monotone, with his chin resting on his hand.

“That’s an unfair comparison.” Harry’s face scrunches up.

“The guy who created the term _glacial pace_ was inspired to do so after having listened to you talk about pulp. What did you think you were doing?”

Finally Harry chuckles and nods in concession. “I just thought I was being deliberate.”

“Nobody cares that much about what they say, Harry.”

“Well. I do.”

The kind of person he with other people is an important distinction to him. He has the occasional issue with speaking out of turn, sure, like everyone does, but for the most part, he makes deliberate decisions on how to approach people. He tries not to say things he doesn’t mean or things that are mean. He’s in control of how he presents himself to the world. Or at least, it sure seemed like he used to be.

_Still alive,_ he texts Liam Sunday night.

_good. can you come by uni tmrw? have some ideas tht might help_

Harry is jolted back into reality.

He’s not done yet, with this life. He’s not finished learning the music of life, that’s what the narrator called it and Harry loved the distinction. There’s not enough Harry knows yet. He doesn’t know why squirrels seem to be so suicidal. He’s never been anywhere outside of the United Kingdom. He doesn’t know what it’s like to kiss Louis Tomlinson on the mouth and everywhere else. The important things.

The narrator hasn’t seemed to speak with any sort of homicidal intent since the day he destroyed Harry’s flat. But all it took for Harry was the most casual reminder that everything isn’t all okay. That his life isn’t allowed to spontaneously increase in quality without there being a catch.

\--

Monday afternoon, Harry finds Liam underneath his usual tree. He plops down beside him and steals a crisp from the open bag next to him.

“Ask, Harry,” Liam scolds.

“Liam, may I have a crisp?”

“No.”

“Oops,” Harry says, popping it into his mouth anyway.

Liam shifts the bag out of Harry’s reach. “Have you brought your notes?”

Harry hands them over. “What’s the plan?”

“You’ve copied down a lot of phrases word for word. If this is a published author writing your story, I can attempt to match diction, style, and tone. Since you can’t exactly provide me with a recording of his voice.”

Harry grimaces. “That sounds impossible.”

“Yeah, well, trying to stop the plot was a bust, wasn’t it?”

“Literally,” he jokes. “You know. Because of the wrecking ball?”

Liam rolls his eyes. He hands Harry a small slip of paper. “This is the name of a series of podcasts with interviews of contemporary British authors. He could be on there.”

“I will listen to them,” Harry assures him.

Liam nods and buries himself in Harry’s notes. Harry is not sure if he has been dismissed.

“He’s in a good mood lately,” Harry says, “the narrator. Things have been going well.”

“Well, it’s a tragedy, Harry, eventually the other shoe is going to drop,” Liam says distractedly, flipping pages.

It feels like a slap to Harry’s face, even though he knows this. He _knows_ , he spent hours thinking about it on the couch last night after Niall had gone to bed. He knows, he knows, because despite the brief respites, despite the hours of contentment he’d built up the past weekend, he still thinks about it every day. Every minute. Every time the narrator speaks.

“Right,” he breathes out.

Liam glances at him over the rim of his glasses. “Oh. Well, it _could_ change into a comedy.”

Harry shakes his head minutely.

“Maybe,” Liam says, with a slightly more believable tone of hope. “The experiment from last week didn’t exactly go according to plan, but it did tell us that you affect the plot as much as the plot affects you. So he’s not just telling you what to do.”

“I fought back,” Harry says.

“Right. So what if you kept fighting back?”

“I can change my own story. I can make it into whatever I want,” Harry realizes.

“You can try. Operation Harry Takes What He Wants.”

“That has quite the ring to it,” Harry says and they trade smiles.

“So what do you want?”

Harry’s heart begins to thump a little faster because he knows now exactly what he wants and he knows he’ll kick himself if he doesn’t do everything he can to get him.

He shows up at the Uprising shortly before closing and hides outside, psyching himself up. Twenty minutes later, Louis exits, three boxes balanced precariously in one hand and the door key in another. Harry shifts his own box as he walks up. He hasn’t thought of a brilliant opening line, so he panics.

“Hello,” Harry says loudly and Louis nearly drops his boxes.

“What the fuck,” he says, turning around. His face falls from irritation to passivity as startlingly fast as it always does.  “Oh. Mr. Styles.”

“Hello,” Harry repeats dumbly as Louis looks him up and down with a cocked eyebrow.

“I’m closed for the night,” he says.

“I know.”

“Okay. Good night.” Louis turns back to lock the door.

“I’ve got you something. To apologize,” he says quickly, shifting the box again. It’s quite heavy.

“Yeah?” Louis says, sneaking a peek over his shoulder.

“It’s, um, flour. Multiple bags of flour. Like flowers, but.”

Louis’ guarded face stares at the box of multicolored bags of flour and Harry is starting to lose the very minimal amount of cool he started the conversation with.

“I shouldn’t. It would be inappropriate. Perhaps I could purchase them,” Louis says, monotone.

Harry nods. “I deserve that. But I’m trying to apologize. I can’t leave things the way I left them. So please accept my apology.”

_Harold thrusted the box out to Louis, who made no moves to grab it or show any sort of appreciation like Harold had kind of hoped he would. Harold had just kind of thought everything would go very smoothly. Apology, flour, acceptance, forgiveness, lots of smiles, happy endings. What he forgot is that where Harold was thoroughly predictable, Louis was the precise opposite._

Harry shifts around a little at the knowledge that the narrator doesn’t seem to have any faith in this plan either.

“I’m not going to be the reason you get fired.”

“I’ve recused myself from your case. I am not your auditor anymore.”

Louis nods, still so carefully guarded. He unlocks the bakery door and holds it open for Harry. Harry steps inside before Louis has time to change to his mind. Louis settles his boxes onto a table and takes Harry’s box.

“They’re all labeled. Couple of different kinds of flour.”

“Thank you,” Louis says quietly and puts the flour on the island behind the counter. “For what it’s worth, I apologize as well. I didn’t mean to make you upset.”

Harry’s stomach drops a little. “It wasn’t you. I just got overwhelmed by… life, I suppose. Caught me on a bad day.”

_Louis nodded like he wasn’t convinced and stared at Harold some more. Harold wished he could read the baker. He started to feel a little self-conscious under his piercing gaze. He thought a million things. He should have brushed his hair. He should have swung by his flat to collect one of his suits. He should have buttoned his shirt up all the way._

“What the hell is that?” Louis says, pointing at Harry’s left wrist.

“Wristwatch?” He glances down to the small amount of his arm visible under his rolled up sleeve.

“Above that.”

“Tattoo?”

“ _You_ have a tattoo?”

“I got about four thousand of them at uni, yeah,” Harry says a little defensively.

Louis walks closer with that same appraising look that’s starting to make Harry feel a little defiant. “Who are you and what the fuck have you done with Harold Styles?”

“Never existed,” Harry says.

Louis cracks a small smile. “I’m happy to be mistaken.”

“Snap judgments are dangerous,” Harry says primly.

_Harold was not entirely sure what the tattoos were saying about him to Louis. That it made him dangerous and sexy? Because that didn’t feel true. That it made him a little bit of a rebel? Maybe that was a little true. He had gotten some of them for specific reasons and some of them simply because he felt like it. Because his body had felt like the only part of himself that he was in control of. He had forgotten about most of that until now. He’d lived with them for so long, they’d just become part of him, part of his narrative that had long since been described and tucked away._

Louis raises a playful eyebrow. “You didn’t make any snap judgments about me?”

“I did, but it turns out I was right about you being an anarchist, what with your knitting circle and all, so I don’t think that counts.”

Louis nods seriously and Harry loves that about him, that he’s so willing to play along. “Well, you got me there.” He picks up his boxes again and Harry opens the door for him.

“Party?” Harry guesses as Louis locks the door behind them.

“Can’t sell these tomorrow. There’s a homeless shelter on my way home, I drop them there.”

Harry smiles and trails behind Louis as he walks. “What a boy scout.”

Louis purses his lips impatiently and Harry realizes many of Louis’ facial expressions revolve around the strategic pursing of his lips. “It’s better than eating them all myself.”

“Is that a dig at me?”

“Yes,” Louis says firmly.

“Well. That’s rude.”

Louis chuckles and Harry feels like he can do anything.

“You can write this off on your taxes, you know. Set something up with the shelter to make a record of your donations.”

Louis frowns up at Harry. “That’s not why I do this.”

“I know,” Harry says quickly. “I just thought it might help.”

“Help,” Louis repeats and falls silent for a few minutes. Harry admits to himself he hadn’t thought the conversation would get this far, so he hasn’t thought of anything else to say.

“I found your list,” Louis says. “Of suggestions for the bakery. You left it on the desk.”

“Oh,” Harry says, his voice falling deeper in apprehension. He feels on the brink of a lecture from Louis about minding his own business. “I should have thrown that away, but I kind of left in a hurry.” He gives a humorless laugh.

“It’s a good list,” Louis says carefully. “It’s very helpful.”

“It’s just a few ideas.”

“We should work on it,” Louis prompts, stopping on the sidewalk. “If you want to. That is.”

“We?” Harry says dumbly.

“Or I could.” Louis shakes his head. “If it’s a conflict of interest.”

“No, I would love to help,” Harry says quickly.

“Great,” Louis says with a sure smile that almost makes Harry’s brain short circuit again. “Will you come by tomorrow, so we can talk about it?”

“I will come by every day,” Harry says without thinking.

“I’d like that.” Louis walks on, leaving Harry standing hopelessly shocked under a street light. “Until tomorrow, Harry.”

\--

_As it turns out, it was far easier to work with Louis Tomlinson when he wanted Harold in the bakery._

_The main difference in their relationship was Louis’ newfound complete lack of physical boundaries. This revelation came in the form of Louis constantly finding reasons to reach out and touch Harold on the arm or the leg or the shoulder or the curls. Louis pinched and tickled and threw his legs up over Harold’s._

_Harold found he did not mind this development in the slightest and found himself reciprocating more often than he ever thought he was capable of. He had spent days thinking about Louis’ arms and hands and thighs. And now he found himself suddenly and blissfully able to reach out and touch them whenever he pleased._

_All of this happened in a matter of hours._

_Harold was also delighted that Louis’ former silence was replaced by constant talking, loud and sharp and brilliant. Harold could easily see him in law, fast talking his way around anything. When Harold could get him to focus on the task at hand—which was rare and Harold didn’t really mind—Louis was shrewd and calculating._

“It’s not just about cutting expenses, though. You have to find reasons to get new people in here,” Harry explains. “It’s a matter of revenue.”

“Are my startling good looks not reason enough?”

“Well, it worked for me. Not sure how effective it is as a business strategy, however,” Harry says, somewhat cheekily. And he feels just a little proud of himself.

“Aw, Harold, but you were sent here by the government. You can’t have been in before, I’d have remembered.”

Harry is warming to Louis’ use of Harold now that it sounds more affectionate than mocking. “If you let me pay, you would have one more paying customer. Courtesy of Her Majesty.”

“Harry,” Louis warns, but it sounds softer than he probably intended. He jumps up from his seat to assist a customer that’s just come in, the first in an hour.

Harry wracks his brain as he surveys the shop. He’s happier down here in the main room, Louis having refused to let him work upstairs. He hums along to the Coldplay drifting its way through the shop—quite different from Louis’ usual musical fare—and thinks.

The customer leaves and Louis flops onto Harry’s couch this time, swinging his legs into Harry’s lap in that effortless intimacy.

Harry tries to hide a smile. “I have an idea, but you can’t laugh at me.”

“I will make no such promise.”

“Open mic night. Friday at eight, after your regular store hours.”

Louis doesn’t laugh but he doesn’t jump on it. “I don’t have that kind of equipment.”

“I know someone who does.”

“I don’t have the staff for that.”

“I’ll work it.”

Louis crooks a half-smile and Harry knows he’s won. “You will have to adhere to my very strict employee dress code.”

“Dress code?” Harry says with a frown. “You look like you rolled out of bed and put on the first shirt you found on the floor.”

“Harold.”

“I didn’t say it doesn’t work for you.”

“Well, you can’t wear that blouse.”

“S’not a blouse,” Harry grumbles, tugging at it. It’s a thin and loose black button up with a rather elaborate white print. So maybe it does count as a blouse. “I like it.”

“That’s what worries me.”

“I’ll just go buy some of those vests that come three to a plastic bag?”

Harry could pretend all he wanted, but the fact of the matter is Louis looks _very good_ in those vests that come three to a plastic bag. He looks good in everything, probably, Harry guesses, and he would place significant money on this fact.

It is the most difficult to focus on the task at hand when the narrator takes the time to detail to Harry exactly how attractive he finds the baker.

Louis lifts his chin in the air. “So long as I never see another bow tie again.”

Harry scowls at him playfully. “These are unfair working conditions. I won’t hesitate to prosecute you. I know people in government, I’m very well-connected.”

Louis rolls his eyes. “If you can make it happen, you can have your weird pastry-and-tea-sponsored open mic night.”

Harry pumps his fists in the air in celebration of his complete victory.

He pulls his steno pad forward and begins writing out plans for his weird pastry-and-tea-sponsored open mic night—the first of which is picking out a catchier name for the event—when Louis nudges him with his foot. “What’s up?” He looks up to see Louis staring at him in consternation. “Are you okay?”

“I never apologized, did I? Not really.”

“Oh, god, what have you done?” Harry says with mock fear, pretending not to be worried about the look on his face. But he’s actually just a tiny bit afraid.

“Treated you like shit, mostly,” Louis answers. Where Harry would look away in this instance, Louis trains his eyes on Harry’s face. It’s unnerving.

“Ah. That.” Harry shrugs it off. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine. Did I make you upset? Tell the truth.”

Harry puts an appeasing smile he doesn’t actually believe in on his face and suddenly finds his hands really rather fascinating.

“I did. I fucking knew it. Harry.” He leans up and pulls Harry’s face toward him. “I’m sorry. Really very sorry. Unbelievably apologetic.”

“Okay,” Harry says with a nod.

“Okay.” He stares for a few moments longer before lying back down on the couch.

“You’re not just… saying that because it was me, right?” He picks at the toe of Louis’ shoe. “Like if another person from my office came in to finish the audit, you wouldn’t treat them like that, would you?”

He looks away for the first time, his lips pursed a little. “I’m not going to stop being angry about being audited, if that’s what you mean.”

“It’s not. I mean are you going to… you know.” He flaps his hand a little and hope he doesn’t have to say it.

“Throw a tantrum?” Louis says sharply.

“I didn’t say that.”

Louis seems to battle within himself, if his face and lengthy pause are anything to go by. “No, Harry. I would be on my best behavior.”

Harry figures if he’s there when the next auditor comes, he’ll be able to chaperone Louis into polite behavior easily enough. But if he’s gone…

“Start over?” Harry poses. “I’m Harry. I’m 28. I’m from Holmes Chapel.” He holds a hand out.

Louis takes it and shakes it vigorously. “Louis, genius, baker, anarchist, philanthropist.”

Harry considers this a slightly less than complete victory.

The following morning, Harry doesn’t realize Niall is staring at him for quite some time. Harry absently munches on his banana with his face buried in his laptop, designing a flier for open mic night.

“Where’d you go yesterday?” Niall says casually.

Harry pauses, refusing to meet his eyes. “A bakery.”

“Hm. Is this the same bakery you were auditing a few weeks ago?”

“Yes, it is,” Harry mumbles.

“You’re not still working on your holiday, are you?”

“No. It’s… a social visit?” Harry chances.

“Aha,” Niall says and returns his focus to his eggs.

“Could I perhaps borrow some of your equipment for an open mic night that I’m hosting Friday night?”

Niall looks at him again. “What’s going on?”

“The venue isn’t really set up to host that kind of thing and I figured you had all this equipment.”

“What’s going on with _you_?”

Harry frowns. “Nothing?”

Niall shakes his head in disappointment and seems to wait for Harry to change his mind. Harry won’t, so Niall says, “I don’t know if I can really pretend anymore there’s not something going on with you.”

“I’m fine,” Harry says immediately.

“I don’t know, Harry. You took all this time off abruptly. And you seem like sometimes you’re just… vacant, like your mind is elsewhere. And you know I can’t have forgotten you told me you were hearing a bloody voice in your head.”

Harry can’t breathe for a few moments until he can come up with a satisfactory lie. He feels a little resentment brewing within him for being called out. “I talked to a doctor last week and he said that it was stress-related. I’m fine now.”

“So those things you showed me?” he prompts. “That stuff about me.”

He pauses again. “I wrote them.” Which is not _technically_ a lie, considering he was indeed the one to physically write them. Not that he should be splitting hairs at this point, considering the giant whopper of a lie he’s just told.

Niall only looks disappointed. “Okay,” he says quietly, giving up far too easy. It irks Harry, though he didn’t want a fight. He doesn’t like being called out, even if it was in fairness.

“Is that the reason you invited me to stay here? Because you thought I was going crazy?”

“Of course not. I wouldn’t. I’m only saying something because I care.” His voice never raises anywhere beyond reserved.

“Well, you didn’t really know me before, so I don’t think you’re quite qualified to make that judgment,” Harry says flatly. Then he realizes what he’s said.

Niall nods and slowly gets up from the table. “Feel free to take anything you need for Friday.” He drops his plate in the sink and leaves. Harry is paralyzed with embarrassment for too many moments.

He finally jumps up and opens the door, finding Niall standing on the other side of it, staring back at him.

“I apologize,” Harry says instantly. “I guess I’m a little sensitive about that. I didn’t have any right to say those things.”

“Well,” Niall says, lifting his chin, “I’m not going to apologize for worrying about you.”

“Fair enough.” Harry clears his throat because he doesn’t know what else to do. “I’m fine. It’s fine. Really. I promise.”

Niall nods again and Harry pulls him into a hug, hooking his chin over Niall’s shoulder. Niall relaxes into it after a moment. “So long as you promise.”

Niall leaves for work for real this time and Harry bounces around his equipment, taking stock of what he might need. He settles on a couple of speakers, microphones, stands, about two thousand meters of cords, and this control-panel-looking-thing. He thinks maybe he is not the best person to make these sorts of decisions.

Harry is halfway through lugging the first speaker to the bakery before he thinks renting some sort of motor vehicle or getting a taxi would have been the best possible equipment transportation idea.

Louis is baffled by the speaker when Harry pushes through the door with it. “What is that?”

“A speaker.”

“Open mic night is Friday.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s Wednesday.”

“I got a little excited.”

Harry sees Louis fighting a smile, so he flashes one of his own at the baker. Louis shakes his head and gives what Harry decides is an affectionate roll of his eyes.

“Besides,” Harry says, “we’ll have to do sound checks and make sure everything works and all. That takes time.”

“Naturally.”

“I need about seven glasses of water before I go get the other one.”

Harry soldiers on through his exhaustion. Liam texts Harry shortly after Harry arrives back at Niall’s to get the second speaker: _still alive????_

_Barely_ , Harry replies, prompting almost immediately a phone call from him.

“Hey, are you okay, what’s happened?”

“I’m okay! Figure of speech. I apologize for worrying you.”

Liam groans loud with impatience. “You’re going to give me a heart attack.”

“Aww,” Harry says.

“Shut it,” Liam snaps. “What’s going on?”

Harry explains his plans for helping Louis grow his business and Liam reacts predictably.

“I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”

“It’s what I want. Operation Harry Takes What He Wants is in full effect.” Harry can practically hear Liam mulling over it, the little whirs of cogs and reasoning in his brain.

“Fine. Do you need help?”

An hour and a half later, Liam is carrying the second speaker into the bakery while Harry follows him with a large box of microphones and accessories. He directs Liam where to set the speaker down.

“Who’s this, then?” Louis says, and Harry and Liam look up simultaneously to Louis’ intense critical stare down of Liam. “Why do you keep bringing strange things into my home?”

Harry almost laughs when Liam subconsciously backs away a few steps under the heat of Louis’ appraisal. “This is my new mate, Liam, he’s just helping. This is Louis.”

“Looks like,” Liam says a little dumbly, gaping openly at Louis.

Louis raises an eyebrow at Harry, who shrugs in a manner he hopes says _this is how he usually is_.

“Welcome, Liam. I’ve heard nothing about you.”

“I’m not part of the narrative,” Liam explains, gaining him a swift elbow to the stomach, courtesy of Harry. “Ow,” he says pointedly.

“How did you meet?”

“Work,” Harry says as Liam answers, “School.”

“Liam works at a school and I met him in a professional capacity,” Harry clarifies.

“Right,” Louis says slowly, shifting his eyes between the two of them. He seems to decide it’s not worth pursuing. “Need a cuppa?”

“Yes, please,” Liam says eagerly and Louis walks back behind the counter.

Harry catches Liam’s arm as he goes to follow and says quietly, “I really need you to be normal right now. Please don’t Liam all over him.”

“I resent the implication,” Liam huffs and moves to join Louis up by the counter.

Watching the two of them together is a mixture of fun and discomfort on Harry’s part. Louis learns pretty quickly how flustered Liam gets and begins to rile him up constantly. Louis delights in Liam’s tendency for speaking blunt truths. All Harry can do is watch the two of them go at it, verbally, from his usual spot on the couch.

“The what?”

“The cosnom—cosmonaut.”

“The what?”

“The. Cos. Mo. Naut.”

“The what?”

Liam sighs. “I’ll write it down for you.”

Louis turns a smirk to Harry and mutters, “Too easy.”

Liam checks his phone. “I’m teaching a class in an hour, I’ve got to go. It was a pleasure, Louis.”

“Likewise,” Louis says and Harry thinks maybe he’s telling the truth.

“Harry, can we?” Liam says, motioning to the door. Harry follows him.

“You should put these up around campus,” Harry says, pressing some of his fliers into Liam’s hand.

“I will.” Liam drops his voice and says, “Don’t let this go unrequited.”

“I won’t,” Harry promises.

“You stare at him like you’re going to murder him. With your penis.”

“ _Liam_ ,” Harry hisses, shoving him towards the door. He feels his face flushing red with embarrassment because of course he’s thought about that, with and without the narrator’s often untimely input. But Harry hopes there’s a little more to it than just physical attraction.

And maybe he does stare a little. Or a lot. Louis’ just a good person to just sit and admire... what he’s like. Harry isn’t going to apologize.

“I’m just saying. I will see you on Friday.”

“You better bring your a cappella group.”

“We’ll learn something special.”

Liam exits as another customer enters. Harry returns to his couch to await Louis’ attention. The customer leaves with a loaf of bread.

“I hate that, when they put the money on the counter instead of giving it to me when I have my hand out for it. Makes me feel like a cheap whore, collecting my fee from the bed,” he says as he rounds the counter and collapses onto the couch, half on Harry despite there being plenty of room.

“Not cheap,” Harry says.

“Aw, thanks, love,” Louis says as he wiggles around into a comfortable position, propped up into Harry’s shoulder, lying perpendicular to him. “Mm. That’s better. Talk to me.”

“About what?”

“Don’t care,” he says quietly. “Precipitation. Dividends. Your cat.” Louis grabs Harry’s hand and rests it on his head, pushing it back and forth until Harry gets the idea.

“Don’t have a cat,” Harry says as he actively pets through Louis’ hair. Quite like a cat.

“Your ideal cat, then.” Louis closes his eyes.

_The slow and comfortable feeling of Louis’ breathing calmed Harold like nothing else. Harold vibrated with happiness, wishing to soak up the baker’s warmth and bask in it. He felt this moment of absolute ease would perhaps never end._

Harry closes his eyes and smiles in response. It’s a nice thought.

“He’d be ginger and his name would be Rusty,” Harry begins, his low voice rumbling. “He’d never want to go outside. He’d greet me at the door when I got home. He’d sleep on my bed, but probably at the end of it, so I don’t have to worry about rolling over onto him. He’d curl up in my lap when he knows I’m sad and need a cuddle.”

“That’s a great cat,” Louis says sleepily. “We should find him.”

Harry hums his agreement.

_Louis seemed to fall asleep, which Harold would think was a little unprofessional, had he not been so utterly content at the development. They had fallen into each other so quickly, clicking together like pieces of a puzzle finally finding their homes next to each other in the big picture. Had it even been 48 hours?_

He finds it nearly impossible to leave Louis that afternoon, but he is determined to be back at Niall’s flat in time to have dinner ready before Niall arrives home. Proper domestic.

Niall is happy to see apology mashed potatoes and Harry grabs him into a fierce hug.

“I knew you before,” Niall says, pulling back. “You just didn’t really seem to have any interest in getting to know me.”

“No,” Harry starts because that’s the furthest from the truth. Harry didn’t honestly think he was worth Niall’s time.

Niall shakes his head before Harry can explain. “Doesn’t bother me. We’re friends now, right?”

“Of course,” Harry insists.

“You can make it up to me,” he answers with a smile.

Harry knows exactly how. It was certainly lingering around the back of his mind when he thought of the idea yesterday. He wants to do something to show his appreciation for Niall, who has done so much for Harry in such a small amount of time. He wants to make his dream come to fruition, in an admittedly much smaller capacity than a stadium concert.

“You should play. On Friday. Be a proper rock star.”

Niall doesn’t even spare a moment to think about agreeing and Harry wonders if he’s been thinking about it all day. “Yeah, I think I will. Are you ready to join me?”

“Not yet. Maybe next time,” Harry says, ignoring the tiny part in the back of his brain wondering if there will be a next time. If he’ll be so lucky.

“Where is it?”

“Ehm. The bakery.”

Niall narrows his eyes. “Ah. And what’s so special about this bakery?”

“The baker, mainly,” Harry admits, plopping his head onto the table.

“And what’s so special about this baker?”

“Everythiiiing,” he whines muffled into the table.

“You’ve got it bad, then.”

“Really desperately bad.” Harry straightens up again, rubbing his face with his hands. It’s a difficult pleasure to live under the crushing weight of how really rather desperate he is for Louis.

“Have you made a move?”

“Not yet. I haven’t figured out how.”

“I figure, ‘Will you go out with me’ is as good an approach as any.”

“I can’t just ask him out. I have to _do_ something,” Harry says with an indignant gasp. Harry is going to _wow_ , there’s no other way around it.

Niall throws up his hands in defense. “Maybe you should cook him something. It’d win me over.”

Harry turns the thought over in his mind. “That’s not a bad idea.”

Two and a half hours later, Harry finds himself outside the Uprising yet again with a box in his hands, waiting for Louis to exit. He’s standing with his legs locked together and the box hiding behind his back. He bounces a little in anticipation.

“Hello,” he says, startling Louis again.

“Harry, Christ,” he says with more affection than irritation and a hand on his chest, “you can just come inside instead of lurking in the shadows.”

“I know,” Harry mumbles. “I thought this was our thing.”

“Our thing, okay, Harold,” Louis laughs. “I didn’t expect to see you until tomorrow.”

“I couldn’t wait.” He lifts up on his toes a little in anticipation.

Louis smiles and he knows what’s coming, Harry’s sure of it. It makes him all the more nervous. Louis waits patiently.

“I’m sure I am supposed to have a big flowery speech, but the long and the short of it is, will you go out with me?” Harry presents the small box to Louis, opening it to reveal two specially decorated cupcakes—one decorated yes and the other decorated no.

Louis looks into the box for too many moments, as far as Harry is concerned. When Louis plucks out the no cupcake, Harry almost passes out.

“Not sure why you thought you even needed this one,” Louis says, tossing the cupcake over his shoulder.

Harry watches it splat onto the ground icing down. He is caught up in relief but also stuck on _littering is illegal_. He’s definitely just said yes, though, right? “Unfounded presumptions are dangerous.”

“Hardly unfounded. I definitely gave you the go ahead Monday night.”

Harry frowns, thinking back. “You did?”

“ _I recused myself from your case_ is the most romantic thing I’ve ever been told.”

“That troubles me,” Harry starts, but Louis puts a finger to his lips.

“Kiss me, you fool,” Louis demands.

_Harold smiled and complied, carefully shifting the cupcake box out of the way as they came together for a sweet kiss that didn’t take long to transition into desperate and deep. Days and days of frustration evaporated instantly at the presence of Louis’ lips against his, the soft and simple reassurance that Louis wanted this as much as Harold did. Louis wanted him, which was excellent news for Harold, considering how much he really wanted Louis._

_Harold thought he could stay there forever, sandwiching Louis between himself and the door of his bakery, if he’d been allowed to. Louis didn’t seem to mind, if his enthusiasm for kissing was anything to go by. They moved together easily, clicking as always, grasping all the right places._

“Just checking, it’s a yes on the date, then?” Harry confirms as they separate for a precious few seconds of breath.

“Yeah, that sounds good,” Louis says, pulling his face forward again.

“Wait,” Harry starts and pulls himself away. He scoots over to the dropped cupcake and gingerly picks it up. “We should throw this away.”

Louis shakes his head and pulls out his keys to unlock the door again. He drags Harry by the lapel inside the bakery. “You are unbelievable.”

\--


	5. Chapter 5

Perhaps the most nerve-wracking thing about giving someone your work to read is when you have to watch that someone read your work in person, he thinks.

Zayn huffs on cigarette after cigarette like there’s no tomorrow. He’s staring Perrie down, critically analyzing all pen scratches and light chuckles and lip quirks and eyebrow raises. Zayn thinks he’s going to snap when she does a little hum as she turns the page.

He lights his next cigarette off the old one before clicking a pen nervously.

“Stop that,” Perrie says absently as she flips the next page. Zayn drops the pen on the desk.

She finishes the section and places the stack of pages on Zayn’s desk as she composes her thoughts.

It’s all Zayn can do to stop from shouting, “ _Well_?” at her. Instead he impatiently waits. Impatiently.

“It’s nice. I didn’t expect this,” she says at last.

“Expect what?”

“So much, I don’t know. Just niceness. Things are going pretty nice, that just surprises me is all.”

“Yeah, well,” Zayn says flippantly, not feeling like he needs to explain his work to anyone. So what if he wants Harold to have a good time. He deserves it. He’s about to die and Zayn is practically giving him his Make-a-Wish. It’s practically goddamn honorable.

“This apology dinner with Niall seems a little unmotivated, actually, I’m a little confused at why he thinks Harold is behaving strangely. It seems like a bit of an overreaction if the only thing Harold’s done is taken time off work and gone to a bakery.”

She had a point. Niall felt frustrated, so Zayn put him that way. He was missing part of the story, he felt. “I’ll work on that. Anything else?”

“I made my usual notes. But I didn’t honestly think they were going to get together.”

“Changed my mind.”

“Why?”

“He’s got someone to leave behind now, doesn’t he?”

He is doing what she said, trying to give Harold meaning or purpose or whatever. It raises the stakes if he has people who care whether or not he dies. Niall was doing his job on the friendship level and Louis was coming in to connect with Harold greater than anyone had done before in his life. Louis is going to understand him, fit with him. Probably love him.

Perrie nods. “And he’s having fun. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“I know how to have fun,” he snaps.

“Okay, fine,” she says innocently enough and he knows he’s being baited, but he doesn’t really care.

“Get your coat,” he says as he rises from his chair.

“Why?”

“It’s raining,” he explains, childishly pretending like he doesn’t understand why she’s really asked why.

“Are we going back to the roof to murder fictional characters?”

“No.”

“Where are we going?” she asks, even as she follows him out of the studio. She pulls open her umbrella, but Zayn walks along in the rain.

“How am I supposed to maintain my cultivated aura of mystery if you don’t let me surprise you?”

She smiles guiltily. “You’re still stuck on that, aren’t you?”

He throws her a look. “You don’t have an _aura_ of mystery, you have an _air_ of mystery, don’t you? Auras are ethereal, like. And I’m not mysterious. I’m just reserved.” He looks both ways before crossing the street.

“Okay, okay. Not mysterious. But certainly reserved. And elusive. You haven’t done a single interview since your last book debuted.”

“Have you been talking to my agent?” he asks with narrowed eyes. He honestly likes the way she challenges him, calls him on his bullshit. He values that in a reader. And a friend. But that doesn’t mean he has to lie down and take it.

“People want to talk to you,” she says, which he notes is not a denial.

“I don’t want to talk to people,” he says because that’s the expected response of the Elusive Writer. “That’s not true. I like people. I just feel like it’s better if my book does the talking for me.”

“I think people would like hearing from you.”

“Nah, they’d rather hear from Harold or Louis, I’m sure. They’re the ones with things to say.”

“But you’re giving them things to say.”

Zayn always imagines his relationship with his characters is one of collaboration. He listens to them, they listens to him. If he has anything to say, it is for them to discuss and discover. It allows him to be removed, objective, rational. Uninvolved. Impersonal.

He leads her down into the nearest Underground station. He doesn’t even look for a specific destination, he just leads her onto the first train he sees.

“Train seats are very important,” he explains as he bypasses the first two pairs of empty seats. It’s somewhat surprisingly dead for a Thursday afternoon.

He slides into the strategically chosen pair, leaving Perrie the aisle.

“Who is that?” he asks, pointing to a stout, bothered-looking man standing in the far right corner.

“I don’t know,” she says. “Am I supposed to?”

“Sure,” he says. “That’s Stuart Templeton, he pushes paper for a steel manufacturing company. For lunch today, he had a roast beef sandwich. He owns three Top Gear box sets and despises the West End. He takes his morning coffee from McDonald’s for convenience, not taste.”

“Who drinks McDonald’s coffee for taste?” Perrie interjects, but Zayn plows on undisturbed.

“And when he turns off all the lights at night and sits in bed waiting for sleep to take him, he misses his mum and wishes he had visited her more when she was alive.”

Perrie fixes him with a look for a long time and Zayn is beginning to regret all of his decisions in life. So he shrugs. “Do you find all of your characters on the train?” she asks.

“Sometimes I take the bus.”

Perrie looks around. “What about her?” She nods at a hardened-looking woman in her late fifties.

“Ooh, that’s Keheley Shaw, world famous assassin,” he whispers. “She prefers to kill using only her thighs. She’s on assignment in London, hasn’t received her envelope yet. She buys a kitten figurine from every country she kills in. She doesn’t take tokens from her targets and she doesn’t count her kills. She does what she does because she’s the best and she has no regrets.”

“Yeah, but what story do you put her in?”

“Dunno. Sometimes they don’t need stories. They just live.”

“I can’t tell if you’re judging a book by its cover or seeing someone and trying to contradict all possible stereotypes,” she says with a raised eyebrow.

“It’s not about either.”

“Well, what about Harold?”

“What about him?”

“He’s a repressed tax man who wears bow ties to work and believes in handshakes and has four thousand tattoos and knits and cooks and wears floral printed shirts on the weekends and lives life by his wristwatch and finds music in the city.”

“That’s a list of things about him, yes.”

“It’s a list of weird ass quirks designed to endear him to strangers. Quirks don’t indicate complexity or depth of character.”

Zayn frowns at her and begins rather defensively, “He doesn’t collect quirks for the sake of being quirky. He likes things because he wants to. He does things because he wants to. I’m not sure anything else should enter into it for Harold, least of all how other people feel about the things he likes and does. It’s not a matter of manufacturing complexity. It’s just letting him be a person. And complexity is born from that, from being a person.”

He looks around the train at all of the truly singular humans on there. He will never be able to understand what it’s like to be them, but he is nonetheless invigorated by the infinite possibilities he can give to them. And the possibilities can be better or worse than what they have, more interesting or less interesting. He can make inferences based on how their carry themselves, how they’re looking, or how they’re behaving. Even if they’re incorrect inferences, they’re not invalidated because he doesn’t expect anything from the people on the train.

Everything is research, plain and simple. Life is his research.

“It’s about using life to inspire life. It’s no different than, like, looking at pictures of Versailles before growing your own garden. You know you’re not going to do it the same or do it correctly, but it doesn’t matter, because you’re taking what you see and you’re making it belong to you. All art belongs to you. You take inspiration from everywhere, even if it’s subconscious—what, why are you smiling like that?”

“I thought you didn’t have anything to say,” she says lightly, looking at him with her head tilted.

Zayn feels like an idiot, baited again. “Were you winding me up?”

“Not entirely. I still kind of think you’re full of shit about Harold.”

Zayn laughs and he feels like he trusts her on top of already begrudgingly liking her. That’s been happening a lot lately, feeling like he can trust her. He gets snippy and defensive about her notes and suggestions, but still seems to employ them. He goes along with her useless writing exercises because he’s willing to try anything she gives him once. But usually only once.

“Yeah. All right. If you think it’s a good idea, I’ll talk to someone.”

“Good,” she says like she’s won, but Zayn doesn’t feel like he’s lost anything. “This is fun. Do her.” She points at a gray-haired woman casually flipping through a magazine.

“Esmeralda Tanenbaum.”

“Carnival fortune teller,” she suggests.

“Obviously.”

“Intense distrust of spoons.”

“Meditates for three hours every morning on the roof of the carnival bus.”

“Her favorite pie is blueberry.”

“When she settles down and leaves the carnival life behind, she wants to investigate cold cases for the police to better utilize her, well, underutilized psychic gifts.”

Perrie turns to him with a brilliant smile. “You, fine sir, are a delight.”

He nudges into her shoulder affectionately. “As are you. Don’t forget this the next time you say I’m boring.”

\--

_There were twenty-three people in Louis’ bakery by the time Open Mic Night got going around 8.30. Which was about sixteen more people than Harold had thought would actually show up. The crowd, peopled mostly by Niall and Harold’s coworkers—all invited by Niall and seemingly baffled by Harold’s presence in the bakery— and Louis’ regulars, hummed peacefully and Harold moved around easily, dressed in the as-ordered simple black clothing underneath the frilliest pink apron he could find at the shops. He took orders and refilled teas as Louis prepared plates and Niall admirably offered to perform duties as the master of ceremonies._

_Harold was otherwise drowning in frustration after having instituted a No Kissing until Our Date Because I’m Going to Romance You Properly rule the previous day. Both Harold and his wristwatch agreed this was an idiotic move._

Harry massages his aching head at the counter as he waits for three mugs of tea. He hears Niall chattering away at the crowd and the crowd laughing back.

“All right there, Harry?” Liam says, leaning onto the counter next to him.

“I’m great,” Harry says, because for the most part, he is.

“Have you done any requiting lately?” Liam asks, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial tone.

“I have. It’s mutual, we’ve discussed it,” Harry says with a smile.

Liam in turn smiles so bright, his eyes practically close under the pressure from his cheeks. “That’s brilliant.”

“Our date is tomorrow.” Harry rubs at his temples, trying to assuage the rolling pressure.

“Seriously, mate, you all right?”

“It’s…” He’s not sure how to explain it. “The narrator is here and you’re here and I feel like I’m being pulled in different directions. I shouldn’t be talking to you.”

Liam’s face drops. “I can go.”

“No,” he says quickly, taking hold of Liam’s shirt to emphasize the point. “I want you here. This is my night.”

Niall’s booming voice announces over the bakery, “Our second act of the night is a four-man university a cappella group, so. Do with that what you will.”

“This isn’t good, H,” Liam argues, “what if it’s more than that?”

“They’re calling for you,” Harry implores.

“It could be a stroke or aneurysm or something.”

“Has anyone seen a douchebag in a snapback? We appear to be missing one,” says one of Liam’s mates into the microphone.

“That’s you. Go sing,” Harry says, pushing him toward the “stage,” which was just a little sectioned off area in the front of the bakery surrounded by all of the sofas and chairs Louis had in the bakery and a couple more from Niall’s flat.

Liam frowns over at him as he and his three a cappella mates crowd around the microphone. Harry gives a thumbs up as they begin a cover of a Drake song.

“Am I going to see you up there?” Louis says, appearing suddenly and pushing three mugs full of tea toward him.

“Nope. When I sing for you, it’ll be only for you. S’private,” Harry answers with an eye on his plans for tomorrow. Louis rounds the corner to him.

“Mm, I will hold you to that,” he says as he crowds Harry into the counter and sticks his face threateningly close to Harry’s. “Your kissing rule is really rather inconvenient.”

“Yeah,” Harry breaths out as Louis begins to tug stray curls out of Harry’s eyes.

“A lesser man would call the whole thing off.”

“I’m a lesser man,” Harry mumbles.

Louis makes a little _oh well_ face and Harry is practically ready to pounce. “It’s a good thing I’m stubborn.”

“Determined,” Harry corrects.

“Stubborn. And I’m going to make this work.” He gives Harry’s face a playful tap with his hand and walks away.

“You’re terrible,” Harry calls after him.

“Yep,” he agrees with a terrible grin. “And it’s your fault.”

Around 21.15, a young lady interrupts Harry and Louis as they shamelessly flirt by the refrigerator.

“Eleanor! I didn’t think you were coming,” Louis says, keeping his hands firmly on Harry’s waist.

“And miss the opportunity to see your bakery overrun by hipsters with acoustic guitars? Wouldn’t miss it. No offense,” she throws to Harry.

“Well, I left my guitar at home,” he says a little more sarcastically than he normally would to a complete stranger.

“Are you Harry, then?”

“At your service,” he says, offering her a handshake.

She shakes his hand enthusiastically. “Yeah, I see what you mean,” she says to Louis, who narrows his eyes at her. “I’m going to have a seat. Don’t even think about asking me to fetch a Yorkshire, not even a Yorkshire.” She struts back to where the seats are.

“What did she mean, what you meant?” Harry turns a devious grin on Louis.

“She’s delusional,” he says primly, following her trajectory and dumping himself directly onto Liam’s lap.

Liam sputters in surprise. “Hello,” he squeaks out.

“Keep still, you harmonizing freak, Harry’s Irish terror is up,” Louis says, throwing an arm around Liam.

Harry stands behind them, half leaning on the back of the big comfy chair. He plops a hand on Louis’ head and runs his fingers soothingly through his hair.

“This’ll be a traditional Irish drinking song, so raise your cups of tea or whatever,” Niall says into the microphone. He furiously strums out an up-tempo melody on his guitar and growls almost incoherently into the mic.

_Harold loved it. He loved the song and he loved this night and he loved the people here. He began to jump up and down to the song, seeing others spurred to tap feet and chair-dance along to the song. He pulled Louis up out of his chair and spun him around before attempting to lead him in a jumping, twirling dance. Louis crinkled his face with a wide smile._

_Harold selfishly wanted to be the sole recipient of Louis’ rarely-given, world-brightening smiles._

“What are you doing?” Louis laughs, pulling away.

“Whatever I want,” Harry says as he shimmies over to him. He grabs Louis’ hand and attempts to spin himself. Their arms get tangled over Harry’s head and they collapse into each other, laughing as Niall finishes his song.

The crowd goes nuts for him and Niall chants into the mic, “Thanks. Thank you so much. Thank you. Who’s next?” He checks the list. “Ah, that’s all we’ve got.”

“Do another!” Harry calls. “You’re brilliant!”

“Thanks, mum,” Niall answers with a roll of his eyes. “If there’s no one else who fancies a go, I guess I’ll close the night out.” He plops himself down onto a stool. He begins strumming to the sound of applause, and Harry thinks it’s possibly a Mumford and Sons song.

Louis grabs Harry around the middle and says, “All right, so this worked out quite well.”

“Twenty-six people in all, not counting the two of us. The average customer spends about four quid, I’d say this isn’t hurting you financially, at least,” Harry rattles off practically.

Louis nods and Harry can see him calculating in his head. “We just have to get them to keep coming back.”

“Keep Niall and they’ll come back.”

“He’s pretty great.”

Harry frowns down at him. “He’s a tax man, you know.”

“I know.”

“Then how come you already like him but you hated me for like two weeks?”

“He’s Niall,” Louis says like it’s obvious.

“Well. That’s not fair,” Harry pouts.

“It is what it is, love.” Louis turns around to face Niall and wraps himself in Harry’s arms.

Niall finishes his song, nodding again in thanks to the audience’s applause. “Thank you so much. I’ve been Niall Horan, you’ve been a great audience and even better performers. On behalf of Louis over there, I want to thank you all for coming. Please come back soon. Have a good night and be safe going home.” He gives a small wave and sets his guitar down before bouncing over to Harry and Louis.

“That was amazing. Best feeling in the world,” he explodes.

“You’re a proper rock star,” Harry agrees, pulling himself from Louis to tackle Niall in a hug. Harry clings to him like he’s a life raft, and Niall clings back just as hard, seemingly trying to translate his silent thanks.

“I can’t thank you enough for running this,” Louis says, throwing an arm around Niall when they’ve finally disentangled.

_Harold was delighted to see Louis and Niall fall so easily into an instantaneous friendship, despite them having known each other some four hours. Harold figured it was—_

Liam approaches, effectively cutting off the narrator, and Harry starts at the sudden stop. “Hey, do you need any help cleaning up?” Liam asks.

“Walk back to where you were,” Harry says lowly and Liam looks confused, but something about Harry’s demeanor makes him move back instantly.

_Harold figured it was due to a combination of—_

The narrator stops again when Harry beckons Liam forward. Liam raises an eyebrow and Harry says, “Later.” He supposes he’ll just have to live without knowing what the magical combination was that wrought magic in the form of Louis and Niall’s instantaneous friendship.

“A cappella man! You guys were really good!” Niall croaks as soon as he sees Liam. He disentangles himself from Louis and throws himself onto Liam, who blinks a little with shock but kind of goes with it.

That’s the most efficient way to deal with Niall, blink a little with shock but then kind of go with it.

“I’m going to ignore the tone of surprise and take that as a compliment,” Liam answers.

“You should!”

“Liam,” Liam introduces with an offered hand.

“Niall.”

“Louis,” Louis adds like he’s saying _what the hell_.

“Harry,” Harry rounds out.

“Dr. Scott!” Louis shouts.

“Rocky!” Harry says, and the four of them collapse into laughter.

_Harold was overwhelmed by how wonderful it was in this moment to have two of his favorite people standing in one spot._

Three, Harry corrects. Three!

Liam still warily eyes Louis, which Louis seems to miss in favor of throwing an arm back around Niall. “Niall, mate, how can I pay you for your wonderful work this evening?” Louis asks.

“I will take only your finest chocolate cake as payment,” Niall responds and Harry thinks he’s quite serious.

“Are you sure that wouldn’t be inappropriate?” Louis says with a smirk, flicking his eyes toward Harry.

“You are never going to let me live that down,” Harry pouts.

“Never ever. Ever.”

“I dunno what the fuck you’re talking about, but I’m dead serious about the cake,” Niall interjects.

“I will absolutely get you a cake.”

Harry takes a moment to congratulate himself on being correct as Eleanor beckons Louis from the door.

“Ah. I’ve got to be a good host for just a sec,” Louis says to Harry before disappearing to the door to thank people for coming as they slowly shuffle out.

Harry leaves Niall and Liam to chat about whatever as he buses the tables and chairs around the performance area. Liam’s group mates shuffle over and Liam introduces them all. They’re fairly easy going lads, Harry likes them. He wonders how they’re actually willing to put up with Liam, but then he reminds himself of how well Liam sings.

Harry also wonders how he himself puts up with Liam, but then he reminds himself of how much time Liam has dedicated to his case, how he’s been open to Harry calling at any hour, and being the only person who really seems to know everything. That’s what it is to be a friend, Harry thinks, being willing to put up with an unreasonable amount of idiocy and embarrassment because at the end of the day, Liam is a good guy.

After the last person leaves, Louis turns to the three of them and announces, “Eleanor has graciously allowed me to order her to do all the dishes tomorrow, so let’s get this equipment and get the fuck out of here.”

Between the four of them, they’re able to make the trip to Niall’s flat in one go, and Harry is more than relieved. He’s waving off Liam’s looks of concern even though his head feels like death.

Niall makes them all stay for a celebratory drink. “To Louis’ bakery!” he says, raising his glass.

“To Harry’s idea,” Louis answers.

“To Niall’s debut,” Harry adds.

“I’m pretty great,” Liam says.

“Sláinte,” Niall says as they clink glasses messily and throw back the bourbon. “Christ, that tastes like someone shit in the Thames.”

“Why would you know what that tastes like?” Louis asked bemused.

“I don’t,” Niall says quickly, his face dropping like he’s been caught. “Who bought this?”

“Liam,” Harry says with watered eyes burning from the taste, and Liam makes a face at him.

“It worked just fine for you when you were crying over this one,” Liam says, gesturing at Louis.

“What’s that?” Louis says, all innocently raised eyebrows.

“Never again, Liam, I’ll teach you,” Niall says loudly and Liam goes red as Niall throws an arm around him.

“You are not to be hung over tomorrow,” Louis says, tapping Harry directly on the nose.

“I won’t,” Harry promises.

“I would kiss you right now, but I want you to know that your completely misguided view of romance is preventing me.”

“We also can’t scar the kids for life.”

“Mm, yes, we should think of the children,” Louis agrees with an eye on Niall and Liam.

“We can’t desecrate Niall’s flat,” Harry says, though he wouldn’t be entirely opposed if he’s being quite honest.

“Doesn’t look like it’s been desecrated in quite a while.”

“Hey, my flat gets plenty of desecration,” Niall inserts before stopping to think about it. “You know what I mean.”

“Why are you living on his couch? Does Her Majesty not pay you a living wage?” Louis asks, pretend to be all put upon.

“My flat is… under construction,” Harry says carefully.

“Wrecking ball put a great gaping hole in it, more like. Nearly took Harry with it,” Niall laughs and Harry widens his eyes in warning at him, but it’s too late.

“ _What_ ,” Louis shouts, turning murderous eyes to Harry. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because right now you look like you’re going to seek out and murder the wrecking ball operator,” Harry explains calmly. He puts a reassuring hand to Louis’ lower back that doesn’t appear to do much in the way of reassuring.

“I might well do,” Louis pouts.

“He’s fine, Tommo,” Liam says.

“Shut it, _Payno_ ,” Louis snaps.

Liam lifts his eyebrows impossibly high but says nothing.

“It’s fine. I’m fine. This was a great night. Bring it in, lads,” Harry says, raising his arms out. They collapse into an awkward four person circle hug thing. This is right, Harry thinks. This is what he wants. He can fault the narrator for a lot of things, but this is right. Regardless of how they were brought together, he knows this is home. For the first time, he knows this is home.

Long after Liam and Louis have gone home, Harry settles into Niall’s couch, his back actively protesting another night of torture. He’s still awake at 2.00 and he’s going over his plans for tomorrow for the four thousandth time and setting all of the alarms he needs on his wristwatch. He’s giving the wristwatch a chance for redemption: keep things running smoothly for the World’s Best First Date.

His phone buzzes with a call from where it sits on the coffee table.

“Niall?” Harry answers quietly.

“Can’t sleep. Too wired. Best night of my life maybe.”

Harry smiles. “Mine too, I think.”

Harry can hear Niall roll around a little. “Tired though. But none of my tricks are working.”

“What are your tricks?” Harry asks, rolling over himself in a vain attempt to find a comfortable position on the couch he’s officially too tall for.

“First one’s turning off my laptop,” Niall says and Harry doesn’t think that’s much of a trick. “Second one’s masturbation.”

“ _Niall_.” He slaps a hand to his face.

“What? You didn’t hear me, did you?” Niall says as if that makes it okay.

“Why don’t you just come out here and talk to me?”

“If I get out of bed, I’m not exactly trying to get to sleep now, am I?”

That makes no kind of sense to Harry, but he allows it. “What’d you call me for then?”

“Talk to me. Harry Stories always put me straight to sleep.”

“Thanks for that,” Harry says, but he’s smiling in spite of himself.

“Don’t act like you’re not going to do it anyway,” Niall says with a yawn.

That’s fair enough.

“Louis and I are going on a date tomorrow. Well. This afternoon, I guess. I told him we were going to have a proper romantic date and that we couldn’t kiss until we had our date.”

Niall is silent for a moment. “That’s the stupidest fucking thing you’ve ever said to me and yesterday you spent twenty minutes talking about how adults take language for granted.”

“Do you know how many years it takes babies to learn how to speak? While the rest of us, we just go around _talking_ , like it’s nothing,” Harry says defensively.

“You are not to wank out your sexual frustration on my couch because of your own stupidity.”

“I wouldn’t. Go to sleep.”

“Bed time story first.”

“Last night, I dreamt I was on a train,” Harry says in low, soothing tones.

“Perfect,” Niall mumbles sleepily.

“And the train was going to the moon, but I was worried that the cabins would not be appropriately pressurized to handle driving into space. And we couldn’t bring oxygen helmets, except there were dogs and the dogs were allowed to have helmets and there were flowers in little hermetically sealed cases and I’m making things up right now, but it doesn’t matter because you’re asleep, aren’t you?”

Harry waits and gets no response but deep rhythmic breathing and some light snoring. “All right, good night, Niall.” He hangs up and if Niall wakes up with his mobile stuck to his face, that’s his own fault.

\--

Liam calls Harry when he’s on the bus to Louis’ flat. “Spill about last night.”

“It’s nothing. The narrator just kind of abruptly stopped talking when you walked up,” Harry says.

“I had considered that possibility. It’s good to get a confirmation.”

“Sure,” Harry says, but he’s not certain it means anything.

“If it means what I think it does, and I really do think it does mean this, then it means that when you add things that aren’t part of the narrative in the mix, if we get meta, break the fourth wall so to speak, then the narrative has to stop until it can right itself again,” Liam explains.

“I don’t think I understood any of that.” Harry shoves his guitar case between his knees so someone can take the seat next to him.

“If I’m there, I can stop the narrator from killing you.”

Harry sighs deeply. The thought has occurred to him so many times, but that’s never something he could consider asking someone to do.

“I can’t live the rest of my life with you as my chaperone, Liam. And we already know he’s found a way to get past our tricks before.”

“It won’t hurt anything if I try.”

“Hurts me a little,” Harry says, thinking about his raging headaches that subsided pretty soon after Liam left last night.

“Right. I had forgotten about that.” Liam gives his own deep sigh. This is what they’ve reduced themselves to, trading deep sighs of disappointment and resignation. “What are you doing with Louis today?”

“Lots of things. We’re going to Tower Bridge. He’s never walked it.”

“I’m not so sure that’s a good idea,” Liam says.

Harry rolls his eyes, “I know that’s your favorite thing to say to me, but I’m not going to fall or jump off Tower Bridge. I think we can rule that out on our list of possible homicides.”

The passenger next to Harry is openly staring at him and flashes her what he hopes is a pacifying smile. He’s one stop away from Louis.

“I just think you should stay away from things that could be dangerous.”

“So I should cancel our hang-gliding appointment, then?” Harry says with an impatient look that he knows Liam can’t see, but he hopes Liam can feel. Judging by the moment of silence he receives, he imagines Liam is giving him a similar look.

“You know, I liked you better when I thought you were soft-spoken,” Liam grumbles, the fight in him gone.

“I’ve got to go,” he says, rising to exit the bus. “I’ll keep you up to date regarding my safety.”

Harry arrives outside Louis’ flat twenty minutes early. He spends minutes bouncing some of his nervous energy out, but it doesn’t even seem to faze him. He practices deep breaths and throws a cautious smile to a passerby giving him a curious look.

His phone rings and it’s Louis. Harry’s first thought is he’s calling to cancel.

“Hello,” he says tentatively.

“Harold, I thought if you were quire finished pacing the pavement in front of my building, maybe you’d like to come inside?”

Harry looks up at the rows of windows but doesn’t see him. “How long have you been watching?”

“That’s an excellent question,” Louis says and hangs up. Harry hears the sound of the front door buzzing unlocked and he sprints for it.

_Harold ran all the way up the stairs, which he regretted, without banging up his guitar case, which was a miracle, and somehow managed to knock politely on Louis’ door instead of knocking it down like he wanted to. Louis opened the door to a slightly sweaty, heavy breathing mess._

_So far the odds of Harold not making a complete fool of himself on the single most important afternoon of his life were not looking to be in his favor._

Harry huffs indignantly at the low confidence of the narrator, but tries to pass it off as part of his panting.

“I ran up the stairs,” Harry says.

“I noticed,” Louis says.

“Hi,” he says, with what is sure to be a great big dopey smile. He hates his lack of subtlety.

“Hi yourself.” Louis steps out of the way and Harry shuffles into Louis’ flat.

_Louis’ flat was simple, smaller than Harold’s own, with the kitchen and the living room connecting openly and two doors off to the left, one for the bedroom and one for the bathroom, Harold assumed. The flat was decorated by framed photographs everywhere and all Harold wanted to do was pore over every single one until he had committed every color to memory. But he had a plan. And the plan must run like clockwork._

Harry gets a better look at Louis, who has dressed himself in his usual all black attire, with one simple change. “A shirt with buttons on it. I didn’t think you were capable.”

“Now, now, Harold,” he chides half-heartedly, his own eyes giving Harry a critical view. Harry is relieved this one of the stare downs that end with a satisfied smile. “Are you going to play me something?”

Harry rests the guitar against Louis’ couch. “Later. There’s a schedule.”

“Of course there is.”

Harry checks his watch. He is still five minutes early. He’s unsure what to do, because the schedule doesn’t account for that, but Louis rescues him.

“I just need a minute, make yourself at home,” he says as he shuffles off toward one of the doors.

_Harold pounced on the nearest collection of framed photographs, finding they were all of Louis with what Harold assumed were his sisters and his parents. He looked so young, it could easily have been ten years back. Harold noted with delight the amount of colors Louis’ wardrobe had come in then. He was all big smiles and stupid faces and striped shirts and red trousers and fancy braces. He looked unashamedly happy._

_Harold clutched a candid one of Louis in the kitchen with his mum, his arms wrapped around her from behind and the two of them covered in flour as they peer down at a beautifully decorated cake. It was his favorite and he wanted it._

That’s inappropriate, he schools himself, shaking his head but somehow unwilling to let the frame go.

“That’s my favorite,” Louis says, resting his hand on top of Harry’s before pulling the frame from it. He stares at the photo with solemnity before placing it back where it belongs.

“Blue braces,” Harry says, pointing at a picture. “And you were laughing at me for my bow ties.”

“My early twenties were a dark time,” Louis says lowly.

“Looks pretty bright to me,” Harry says and waits for the joke to land. It doesn’t. “Because of your clothing. It’s bright clothing.”

Louis blinks at him, unimpressed. But hopefully fondly so.

_Harold’s wristwatch beeped insistently at him, its blue face lighting up with excitement at the day’s scheduled events. The wristwatch delighted in new sheet music finding its way into the orchestra of Harold’s life. It was like its favorite composer had composed something new and exciting to play just when all of the musicians were starting to feel stale._

Harry is beyond excited as well.

“It’s time to go. You should grab a jacket, it’s going to get chilly,” Harry suggests.

“I’ll be fine.” Louis walks out his door and Harry grabs a jean jacket off the back of the chair by Louis’ door anyway. Louis narrows his eyes a little at the sight of it and Harry shrugs it away, folding the jacket over his arm.

_They walked closely together, Louis’ hand a constant presence on Harold’s back, almost as if guiding him though he didn’t exactly know where they were going. Harold leaned into the touch a little to let Louis know he liked it. He enjoyed being connected--physically, emotionally, really in all senses of the word._

They take the tube to Greenwich and Louis doesn’t clue in until they’re almost at the pier.

“Are we going on a boat tour of the Thames?” Louis asks with his face scrunched up in disbelief.

“Yep,” Harry says, pushing him forward when he stops.

“You know we’re English, right?”

Harry fixes him with an impatient glare. “Two days ago, you told me you have lived here for five years and you’ve never done anything silly and touristy and you said you’d never been on a boat and you didn’t want to do any of these things alone and your sisters don’t come down to visit, so here we are doing them together, get on the bloody boat, Tomlinson.”

Louis laughs at him, but he gets on the boat. Harry pushes Louis to the top of the boat with an insistence that they _need_ the wind in their hair. The boat departs at precisely 14.31.30 and Harry does not appreciate that.

“One _Titanic_ joke and I’m off, though,” Louis says as Harry crowds him up against the railing.

_The tour guide rattled off an endless stream of information about the landmarks they passed and Harold and Louis didn’t hear a word of it. Louis was giving his own endless stream of absolutely useless and false information that threatened to collapse Harold’s lungs with the amount of laughter exploding from his chest._

“That over there is the home of Stuart Templeton,” Louis says, “the greatest steel company reports analyst you’ve ever seen. You can’t really see where I’m pointing, but it’s well off into the distance, just far, far back, past all these other buildings and interesting stuff, it’s there, his home, somewhere in London, trust me.”

“I believe you.”

“And that over there is very possibly a bowling alley. I can’t be sure.”

“What’s this?” Harry says, pointing at nothing in particular.

“That is the single most important building in the history of the entire universe,” Louis explains seriously.

“Yeah? What’s it for?”

“Not a clue. But it looks important, doesn’t it?”

Harry barks with laughter so loud people turn to look at him and Louis looks far too pleased with himself.

The boat docks at Tower Bridge and Harry pulls Louis off.

“You’re not throwing me in the stocks for not having paid my taxes, are you?” Louis asks with an eye on the Tower of London. “Do you have the authority to do that?”

“We only lock up the people who refuse to pay 28% or more, so at 26.53, you are in the clear,” Harry explains, guiding them toward the bridge.

“Oh, good,” Louis says lightly.

Harry stops to chat with the tower worker he spoke to yesterday, confirming their arrangement, and takes Louis’ hand.

“Up we go,” Harry says.

“Where?” Louis looks concerned.

“All the way,” Harry says with a vagueness that narrows Louis’ eyes.

It doesn’t seem to land fully in Louis’ brain until he’s strapped to a rope that is in turn strapped to the side of the bridge and the two of them are quite precariously placed on the wrong side of the railing at the top of the Tower Bridge with not much but the Thames below them.

“This is absolutely brilliant,” Louis says, his eyes wide and his smile wider. “How did you pull this off?”

“I told you, I work for the government. I know people. I don’t know why people don’t take me seriously when I say that,” Harry says, but the fact of the matter is Niall knows all of the people and Harry isn’t quite sure _how_ and he knows not to question it. Is this allowed? Probably not. Is this safe? Definitely not. But Louis looks far too excited for Harry to spare much care.

Until Louis leans forward a little and Harry’s stomach lurches. “Maybe don’t do that,” Harry says uneasily, fisting the loose fabric in the arm of Louis’ jean jacket. It’s chilly atop Tower Bridge.

Louis narrows his eyes and Harry thinks for one terrifying moment he’s going to do something stupid, expressly because Harry’s asked him not to. Instead, Louis leans into Harry’s side and Harry feels safer.

They spend half an hour up there, Louis sharing more and more ridiculous information about London and Harry trying not to laugh so hard he falls off the side of Tower Bridge. Liam would never forgive him.

“In 1492, Queen Elizabeth decreed—”

“Henry the seventh, wasn’t it?”

“ _Harold._ ”

“My apologies. Please continue.”

“In 1492, Queen Elizabeth decreed llamas to be the official royal mascot. The only issue being llamas are not indigenous to the British Isles. She ordered Christopher Columbus to go to South America—”

“That’s not—”

“Harold, do be quiet. She ordered Christopher Columbus to go to South America and bring her back all of the llamas, she very specifically said that, _all_ of the llamas. And when he returned with the Nina and the Pinta and the Santa Maria—”

“Very impressive that you know the ship names,” Harry compliments.

“—chock full of llamas,” Louis continues without interruption, “Her Majesty had them paraded down the Thames while she rode in her own boat, wearing her customary glare of dissatisfaction despite having just acquired all of the llamas in South America.”

“That’s very selfish of her, capturing all of the llamas.”

“Yes, well, the llamas ended up being quite the nightmare, they caused the Great Fire of London and shit all over Buckingham Palace. Just a dreadful time had by all.”

They take about seven photos of themselves, all fairly close to identical, with Louis repeating the same posed look of shock in every photo, except one where he goes cross-eyed, and Harry alternating between copying the look of shock pose and giving the cheesiest big cheese smile he’s ever given. Harry wonders if he’ll make it into a framed photograph on Louis’ wall. He would pick the cross-eyed one if asked.

_Harold’s wristwatch beeped again to signal the coming of the tower attendant to lead them back down to the ground after their half an hour. The pair went off in search of kebabs, which was not part of Harold’s plan. But Louis insisted and Harold hadn’t had lunch because of his nerves, not that he was willing to admit it. Harold thought he was willing to skip out on part of the plan if it meant he and Louis could keep cuddled up on a bench, eating kebabs and playing two truths and a lie._

Harry leans over and takes a chip from Louis’ basket even though he has plenty of his own. Louis’ just taste better.

“Hm,” Louis mulls over his options. “I auditioned for _The X-Factor_ once. My favorite color is black—”

“You can just stop right there, I don’t need the third one, there’s no _way_ your favorite color is black,” Harry interrupts.

Louis raises a critical eyebrow at the sarcasm, but Harry is _certain_ he’s also a little impressed. “If you aren’t going to play properly, we’re not going to play at all.”

“I apologize.” Harry ducks his head in fake sheepishness.

“The third one is I almost called the HMRC every day looking for you when you didn’t come back,” Louis says softly. He rubs at his chin a little and Harry is still trying to form words when he speaks again. “Anyway, you’re right, my favorite color isn’t black.” He looks up at Harry with a soft grin. “Today it’s green.”

Harry kisses him then and there because he’s a lesser man.

_When they arrived back at Louis’ flat, they made dinner together because Louis insisted on doing_ something _in this day that Harold has planned out expertly. Louis ended up hardly helping at all, choosing instead to sit on the counter and talk nonsense while Harold prepared everything. Harold talked nonsense right back whenever Louis deemed it appropriate for Harold to talk._

“You do talk some shit, Harold,” Louis remarks after Harry concludes a particularly lengthy diatribe on time travel paradoxes.

Harry makes a face. “You talked about llamas shitting in Buckingham Palace today. That’s _literally_ talking shit.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t endearing,” Louis says, pinching Harry’s bum before grabbing plates from a cabinet.

“Knock knock,” Harry says, now determined to talk more shit.

“Who’s there?”

“Urine.”

Louis looks like he really can’t believe he’s about to say what he does. “Urine who?”

“Urine big trouble if you don’t open this door right now, young man,” Harry says with his best scolding mum voice. Louis rolls his eyes with such vigor, Harry is afraid his eyes are going to get stuck in the back of his head.

_Harold always found himself stuck between wanting to impress Louis and wanting to embarrass Louis. Usually he stuck to the latter, treating each eye roll like a challenge to do better. He was curious how far he could push Louis to fond disgust until Louis was no longer willing to look at him. It was a dangerous game to play, as Harold was always concerned Louis would genuinely stop caring about him as quickly as he seemed to start caring about him._

_Louis seemed to enjoy diving in feet first, Harold noted, never testing the water first. Harold, needless to say, was a water tester. But with Louis, he felt like he could make jump first, think second work._

After dinner, they curl up on the couch together and Harry sings for Louis, prefacing it with, “I’m still learning and I’m having a tempo problem because I’m a little slow at chord progressions, but this is it. Don’t laugh at me.”

“I would never,” Louis says and Harry thinks he believes him.

He strums slowly, not too terrible, he notes. He’s unintentionally turned the Beach Boys’ _Wouldn’t It Be Nice?_ into a ballad, crooning around the song’s wishes.

_Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older? Then we wouldn’t have to wait so long. And wouldn’t it be nice to live together in the kind of world where we belong?_

He giggles a little at himself when he fumbles over the chords but tries to recover as professionally as possible.

_Happy times together we’ve been spending. I wish that every kiss was never-ending. Wouldn’t it be nice?_

He glues his eyes to his hands as he plays, certain one glance up at Louis would break him.

_You know it seems the more we talk about it, it only makes it worse to live without it. But let’s talk about it. Wouldn’t it be nice?_

He finishes the song, letting the last chord hang in the air before peeking up at Louis’ face, which is broke into a soft grin. Harry loves this soft grin as much as he loves Louis’ furiously bright grin.

Louis takes the guitar from Harry’s hands and sets it gently on the floor. He crawls on top of Harry, pressing staccato kisses to his mouth. “That was amazing. You’re amazing.”

“I just—mmph—I just started,” Harry says.

“Thank you for playing for me.” Louis pulls back to look him squarely in the eyes. “Seriously.”

“Kiss me, you fool,” Harry says and Louis complies happily. “This is so much better than not kissing,” Harry mumbles.

“Why the stupid—terrible—ill-advised—kissing rule?” Louis asks, punctuating his words with kisses all over Harry’s face and down into his neck.

“I just wanted to try romance out, like a proper fairy tale romance, before…”

“Before?” Louis prompts with a crooked eyebrow.

Before I died, thinks Harry. “Before I don’t get another first date,” Harry says, which is accurate enough. He wonders whether or not Louis would be his last first date even without the narrator’s threat looming over them. The phrase _borrowed time_ always seems to bounce around in his head at the most inopportune moments.

Louis blinks at him, pulling away from Harry with furrowed brows.

“I didn’t mean that to sound as heavy as it did,” Harry says quickly.

Louis only hums and Harry isn’t quite certain what that reaction is. They sit there, staring at each other, Harry lying on the couch and Louis seated on top of him, for at least a minute.

“Did you have any other things on the schedule for this evening?” Louis asks.

“I did not.”

“Good. I do,” Louis says and pulls Harry off the couch and toward his bedroom.

\--

_Harold Styles loved sleeping in a bed. The unimaginable amount of time he’d spent on Niall’s couch reminded him just how much he loved sleeping in a bed. He loved sleeping next to someone in a bed even more, all tangled limbs and cuddling and body heat and never feeling alone. He spent three of the next four nights in Louis’ bed—Niall shouted at Harold over the phone until he came home to him on Monday night—delighting more_ whose _bed he was in than in the fact that he was in a bed at all._

_He learned things about Louis he would never have guessed. Things like Louis being unable to stay awake past 22.30._

“Whoever decided that daily freshly baked goods was an appropriate business model for a bakery was seriously disturbed,” Louis says sleepily on one of those nights when Harry is too wired to go sleep and Louis needs to wake up at 5.00.

Harry just lets him curl into his side and drift slowly to sleep. He works at Louis’ hair like he knows he likes and take the time to study him in a way that he knows Louis would laugh at him for. He takes the time to meticulously memorize each of Louis’ tattoos on those nights. He finds a new favorite every time and rubs a soft finger over it.

He inspects the tic tac toe game on his right arm, with only three x’s taking victory. “O didn’t put up much of a fight,” Harry notes.

“No, you didn’t,” Louis mumbles, more breath than voice, and Harry figures, yes, okay, that’s pretty true.

_Harold felt stuck to Louis, like he needed to be glued to him, but he didn’t know why._

Harry knows exactly why he’s stuck himself to Louis. It’s because he knows he doesn’t have a lot of time left. He doesn’t spend a lot of time reminding himself of that, because that could lead to a dark spiral Harry has no interest in. He wants to be silly and light and happy. He’d rather spend his time arguing about the practicality of moving staircases in Hogwarts because he and Niall had had a Harry Potter movie marathon Monday night and watching Louis attempt to be patient with him shouting about it now because Niall wouldn’t hear any of it.

“It’s irrational, Louis, there’s no purpose for them. It’s dangerous and impractical, and I just want everybody to be _safe_.”

Louis sighs because it feels like it’s been forever since they’ve known each other and he seems to just know Harry has to get these things out of his system.

“Like, how did that conversation go? The founders are just like, ‘Ooh we could have moving stairs! They can just kind of shift about whenever they feel like, regardless of the safety or intention of the person or persons using them!’ It’s very frustrating.”

“This is a very effective use of your time, Harold,” Louis says glibly, staring down at his hands. “I’m glad someone’s on the case. I can tweet JK Rowling if you like.”

“You’re making fun of me,” Harry huffs.

“Yes, I am.”

He’d rather spend his time poking and prodding at Louis until he gave in and admitted he knew how to play the piano.

Louis unearths a small Casio keyboard from his closet and settles down onto his couch next to Harry. “This is Michael, my Casio.”

“You’ve named your piano?” Harry asks, finding it impossible to be endeared more.

“I thought you’d appreciate the pun. I’ve named it after Michael Cassio,” Louis says proudly and Harry has no idea why that’s supposed to be clever. He smiles up at Louis, unwilling to admit his confusion, but Louis reads him anyway. “He’s a character from _Othello_?” Harry nods gamely, but Louis sees through him again. “Shakespeare? Tragedy?”

“Ah. Very clever.”

“Liam would have thought it was funny. At least he _reads_ ,” Louis grumbles and flips on the keyboard. He stretches his hands and cracks a few of his knuckles, obnoxiously taking time to warm up his hands.

“You shouldn’t do that. It’ll give you arthritis,” Harry advises and Louis rolls his eyes.

“Are you quite ready for the piano performance of a lifetime?”

“I’ve never been so ready in my life.”

Louis rests his hands over the keys and takes a deep breath in. He then very seriously plunks out _Chopsticks_ , which has Harry laughing so hard he almost falls off the couch. Louis stops before the end of the song, flashing a devious smile at him.

“All right, all right, that was a joke. It’s actually more fun if we play together,” Louis says, pushing the keyboard a little towards Harry. “Do you know the song _Heart and Souls_?”

“From _Big_ ,” Harry recognizes.

_Harold liked the idea of collaborating on a song to do with both hearts and souls, but he was not so much of a sap that he vocalized this thought. Instead he studied Louis’ instructions very intently and by the end of an hour, Harold had got it down flat. They filmed it on Louis’ phone and sent the shaky, poorly filmed video off to Niall, who responded with several emojis of delight. Harold liked the idea of having documented their hearts and souls for the world._

_Harold was only mildly wary of the protest Louis took them to Wednesday afternoon. He was convinced to go at the promise of an ice cream cone at the end of the date. Louis kept a hand on Harold’s back the entire afternoon, anchoring him the massive crowd. Harold ducked around signs and worried a little about being fired until he realized that it didn’t really matter to him anymore._

Harry thinks he must look a little tense, because Louis leans up, grabbing his shoulder and whispering close, “Harry, don’t worry, they have a permit. This is nonviolent. We’re not going to get arrested.”

_Harold nodded and gulped, surveying what must be thousands of people crowding in front of the House of Parliament. Harold picked up some rhetoric from the speaker currently at the microphone, who called for a revolution. The people wanted to reclaim control of their lives, ensure their own welfare, and take care of each other. It’s not a bad sentiment, Harold thought. They want to help._

_Louis seemed invigorated by the buzz of the crowd that echoed chants. Even behind the darkness of his sunglasses, Harold could see the light in his eyes. This was where Louis must feel at home, surrounded by a throng of like-minded people while he fought for what he believed in. Harold had never fought for anything a day in his life, but Louis, he knew, Louis was always fighting. Harold loved it._

“It’s about control,” Louis explains. “Maybe about autonomy. But mostly being in control of how our government treats us. We can’t be thought of as blindly willing to follow the people in charge when they’re making the wrong decisions and taking us in the wrong direction. We can’t stand aside and allow wasteful spending and austerity to overshadow the real need we experience.”

“Like what?” Harry asks, though he knows the answer. He just likes to see the fire behind Louis’ eyes, to experience all the things about Louis that made Harry think he was a revolutionary that first day they met.

“People who can’t even afford to eat. Genuinely useful public services that are systematically disappearing,” Louis ramps up, his arms flying wildly with passion. “I told you I was happy to pay for parks and uni education and health and welfare provisions. I’m happy to pay my taxes when I know they’re going to mean something. I’m not happy to pay the people responsible for ruining lives. And the amount of discrimination is complete bullshit.”

“Control,” Harry agrees. He thinks of the narrator of course, at this point it’s practically a habit.

“Things will only change when you actually _do something_ , instead of just sitting around on your hands and bemoaning the unfortunate situation we find ourselves in. We have to think of the present and the future. We have to leave our home better off if we want to succeed. Living in a perpetual state of poverty while relinquishing control of our own lives is going to destroy future generations. Does that make sense?”

“Yes,” Harry answers. He’s reminded of being in control of his own narrative. How Liam encouraged him to take what he wants. Louis always seems to take what he wants. It’s admirable to want control over his life. He imagines Louis doesn’t believe in fate.

_Louis made friends in the crowd easily enough, Harold did his best to keep up. He handed out more handshakes than he ever had and even found someone to chat with while Louis checked in with someone he knew, most likely from his anarchist knitting circle. When Louis returned his focus back to Harold, the stranger he was speaking to seemed almost relieved to be able to walk away. Harold frowned after him._

“I thought we were having a nice conversation,” Harry remarks. “He was telling me about his aunt’s sciatica.”

“His aunt’s _sciatica_ ,” Louis repeats, shaking his head.

“Did I say something wrong, do you think?”

“Sometimes I have trouble figuring out if you're for real,” Louis answers, which is not really an answer at all.

“What do you mean?”

“Like no one can be  _that nice._ Or  _that interested_  in things.”

“I wish that didn’t surprise you,” Harry says with a frown. “It’s so easy to be nice. There’s really no reason to be otherwise. Most days at least. It doesn’t cost you anything.”

“That's what I mean. People don't make the effort to be that endearing.” 

Harry tries not to feel frustrated. It’s not a matter of endearing. It’s a matter of doing right by others. “I'm just trying my best to be a person.”

“Right. I get that. But perhaps it just comes off as... I don't know. Fake, to other people. Or condescending.”

“But it's not fake.”

_“Harry_. I know that. They don’t.”

“I don’t know how I can go about it any different,” Harry says, exasperated.

“You shouldn’t.” Louis speaks with finality and pulls Harry in for a kiss.

_Harold liked the way Louis kissed, with not so much force as it was intention. To claim him, perhaps. Like his lips were playing Harold’s at unrelenting fortissimo._

Harry snorts a little at the description, pulling away and digging his head into Louis’ shoulder in embarrassment.

“I’m serious,” Louis says, assuming Harry is laughing at him. He pulls Harry’s head back up and looks him straight in his eyes. “If they don’t like you, they can fuck off. And I say this as someone who behaved like a right arsehole because I didn’t get you.”

“You are going to be making that up to me for quite some time,” Harry adds with a somber shake of his head.

“It’s a good thing I’m buying you ice cream.”

They stay for hours, listening to speakers and losing themselves in feeling part of something bigger than themselves. This is something Harry is familiar with, the anonymity, but this time it’s with a purpose. The music of the crowd is worth losing himself in.

The mint chocolate chip ice cream is also pretty great.

_Their lives had a routine, even after three nights. Louis woke up far too early to go to his bakery, he kissed Harold’s temple twice, and Harold pretended not to be awake because Louis didn’t like the idea that he woke Harold up unnecessarily. Harold lounged around Louis’ flat before preparing and bringing him lunch at the bakery. They pretended to work on the plans for ensuring the financial security of Louis’ bakery, when really they were, for the most part, running around, baking together, and stealing kisses._

_Word got around quite quickly to Louis’ regular customers that Harold the tax man was always around and Harold was more and more often hunched over a desk helping someone with their finances. The difference between being an auditor and being an accountant seemed to be lost on them, but Harold was always happy to help._

On Thursday, Harry thinks this is the happiest he’s ever been. He keeps thinking that, he keeps finding moments where he says to himself, _This is the happiest I’ve ever been_. Only to contradict himself sometime later, thinking, _No,_ this _is the happiest I’ve ever been._ He’s preparing a soup and sandwich combination for lunch, he’s got his literature podcasts playing on his phone, and he’s happier than he’s ever been.

_“Today we’re talking to Zayn Malik, whose first novel_ Story of My Life _rose quickly to the top of every major bestseller list in the world, pretty much, with glowing reviews and an unparalleled amount of copies sold. His hotly anticipated follow up novel is expected to release early next year. Zayn, thank you so much for sitting down with us, we understand you aren’t the interviewing type.”_

_“No, eheh, I guess I’m not. But thank you for having me.”_

Harry reaches for the oregano and sprinkles a fair amount into the soup.

_“Can you tell us what you’re new novel is about?”_

_“Ehm. Well. It’s tentatively called_ Death and Taxes _. S’about this tax man, I guess. I can’t really say what it’s about, I guess, because the plot isn’t really what it’s about, you know?”_

_“Sure, sure. What can you tell us?”_

_“It’s about destiny, I suppose. The twisting strands of fate, how they weave people together. It’s about choices and whether or not your choices mean anything in the fate of destiny. They say there’s nothing certain but death and taxes, yeah?”_

Harry openly gapes at his phone. He feels the wooden spoon drop from his hands and splatter tomatoes onto the floor. He walks closer to the sound of the voice as it keeps droning on. It’s a young man, contemporary, from the north. Harry would never be able to miss his specific accent, the way he forms his thoughts deliberately as he speaks, the way his voice transitions easily from humor and mirth to sincerity and finality.

This is his narrator.

The podcast stops itself automatically as Harry calls Liam with his shaking hands.

“Harry!” Liam chirps.

“I’ve found him, I’ve found the narrator,” Harry gasps out.

“What?”

“He was on one of the podcasts you sent me, his name is Zayn Malik.”

Liam is quiet for a moment. “Oh.”

Harry thinks he’s going to fall apart. “What?”

“I’ve read his other book. I actually wrote my Master’s thesis on it. And. It’s not a comedy, Harry.”

“What happens?”

“The protagonist dies. Almost everyone does.”

Harry breaks then, sinking to the floor, not caring that he’s sitting directly on his spilled soup. “Fuck,” he breathes. He drops the phone and sobs into his hands. Liam still talks into the phone, but Harry can hardly hear him and he doesn’t want to. He’s stuck on this _was_ the happiest he’s ever been.

\--


	6. Chapter 6

Zayn is pretty delighted the Friday he finishes sketching out the ending of his novel. He has defeated his writer’s block and he is satisfied with the way things work out. He scratches it out on a steno pad, writing and rewriting and correcting furiously before taking the time to type it up. It’s exhilarating.

Perrie crashes into the studio with her arms full of celebratory takeaway. “Tonight we feast like kings!” she shouts, hoisting the bags in the air.

Zayn laughs. “Very nearly done.”

“I’ll get it set up,” she says, which in her mind seems to mean dumping all of the bags on the floor in front of Zayn’s desk and sitting on a pillow to sort it out.

Zayn makes out a couple of suggestions for the final line before setting his pen down. “I could be finished today.”

“Cheers!” she shouts, lifting her chopsticks in the air.

“Don’t think I could’ve done without you,” he says, settling on a pillow next to her.

“Watch yourself, there, that almost sounded like you appreciated me,” she jokes, and Zayn knows she’s joking, but he worries still that that’s what she thinks of him.

“I’m serious. Of course I appreciate you,” he says seriously. He’s very serious. At least about this.

She looks up at him with a grin. “I know you do.”

He pokes at some food. “What are you doing after this?”

“Thought I might go for a walk why you type,” she says with a shrug.

“No, I mean, after we’re done. Together.”

She crooks an eyebrow. “Ah. Well, on to the next, isn’t it? That’s my job.”

Zayn nods and prepares himself and he’s sure he’s still going to sound like an idiot, even though he is a professional writer, he writes things _professionally_. “I was wondering if maybe you still wanted to come around. Socially. Hang out, like.”

She stills and gives him a curious look. “Are you asking to be friends?”

“If we weren’t already. Yeah.”

“I’d love that,” she says easily, lifting up a container to inspect it. Zayn doesn’t know why, but this feels like a huge victory. “What’s this?”

“Miso soup?” he guesses.

“Soup but no spoons?”

“I think you’re supposed to drink it,” he says, mouth full of rice. She flips off the cap and to his horror, she dumps it in her container of rice. He almost chokes with laughter. “You drink it!”

She’s chuckling too as the soup begins to drip out of the bottom of the little white container of rice. “Whoopsie daisy,” she says, holding the container over one of the plastic bags. She still digs in to the soaked rice. “Actually not that bad.” She holds the sopping mess out as an offer, as if anyone would actually willingly poison themselves.

“Not a chance,” he says, poking instead at some noodles.

There’s a knock at the door and the two of them stare down each other to see who’s going to get it. Zayn knows he’ll win because his stubbornness knows no bounds, not when there’s victory takeaway to be eaten. Perrie sighs at him like he’s a terrible human being and she hops up to answer the door.

He hears her talk a little with the person at the door before shouting out at him, “Zayn, are you expecting company?”

“No,” he shouts back.

“Wait—what are you—” she says from the door and Zayn looks up in confusion.

He has to blink about seven times, because he’s sure he’s hallucinating. Because Harold Styles is standing right in the middle of his studio, staring at Zayn. Harold Styles, it’s him from top to bottom. The curly bed head and the silly blouse and the tattoos and the earnest look and the pigeon-toed stance and the green eyes and the legs for miles. Harold Styles.

“I apologize for barging in like this,” Harold says, but at this point Zayn can’t be sure because his brain has blocked up. His brain is literally refusing to process information.

Perrie chases after him but stops abruptly, looking at the two of them gawking at each other. “Are you—Zayn, do you know this guy?”

“Is this a joke? Are you having me on?” Zayn blurts out at last.

“It’s not a joke. Can we talk?” Harold says in his stupidly deep voice, and Zayn wants to pass out. “You’re Zayn Malik, right?”

“Zayn?” Perrie calls again.

“Give us a minute,” Zayn mumbles. “Please.”

Perrie looks concerned but grabs her dripping disaster of rice and soup and leaves. Zayn can’t register much more than that.

“Who are you?” Zayn asks.

“I’m Harry Styles, I believe you’re writing a book about me?” Harold says, holding his hand out and trying out a smile.

Zayn thinks he must be looking at Harold’s hand like it’s diseased because Harold drops it pretty quickly. “It’s Harold, not Harry,” Zayn says dumbly.

“It’s definitely just Harry,” Harold says, tugging part of his hair from his face nervously.

“Who sent you? Was it my publisher? This isn’t funny,” Zayn says, because one’s fictional characters do not suddenly appear in one’s studio.

“This isn’t a joke. I apologize, this must seem so strange. But I couldn’t just.” Harold furrows his brows and searches for the words. “I’ve come to ask you not to kill me, I suppose.”

Zayn barks out a disbelieving laugh, the sentence sending him for a loop. He moves then for the first time, backing away from this person who is definitely _not_ Harold Styles. He runs his hand across his face as he turns around in a circle, attempting to digest.

“I don’t mean to startle you or anything, but I had to come find you,” Harold says desperately. “You knew everything, you knew about my wristwatch and the music and Louis and you said it, you said, _little did Harold know that this simple, seemingly innocuous act would ultimately result in his death._ And. Well, it’d just be really great for me, if you don’t mind, if that could… Not happen.”

Zayn knows he hasn’t shared his first draft with anyone but Perrie, and he knows that either this is the world’s best ever prank pulled or he’s standing in front of Harold Styles. Both choices seem unlikely.

But Zayn thinks he knows he’s real. It’s everything he sees about Harold Styles and everything he hears from Harold Styles.

“It’s just,” Harold implores when it seems clear Zayn isn’t sure what to say. “I’m real. I’m a person. I hear you everywhere. And I don’t know how you know about me, but you do. And I’m a little scared.”

Zayn thinks Harold’s going to start crying. “Well fuck,” Zayn says at last. “This is not possible.”

“I have a lot of experience in not possible these past three weeks, trust me,” Harold says with a humorless laugh. “I’ve been hearing your voice in my head. Narrating my life. So.”

This news throws Zayn for a loop, that Zayn has been as much a part of Harold’s life as Harold has been a part of his. A voice in his head. “You didn’t think you were crazy?”

“I did. But.” Harold drops his eyes and digs the toe of his shoe into the floor a little. Zayn knows this move, he’s written this move. “Everything you said was right, it felt _right_. Things I’d never told anyone, feelings I didn’t even know I felt. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Sure,” Zayn agrees, rubbing at the back of his neck to remind himself that this here is reality.

“And Liam said that because you were referring to me using the third person limited and that you implied there were things I didn’t know, that it couldn’t possibly be all in my head because if it were in my head, then I’d know everything. Something like that. It didn’t really make sense to me.”

“I haven’t written anyone called Liam,” Zayn says. If he’s written about Harold’s life, he should know every character, right? So is Niall real? Louis and his bakery? Were there really anonymous co-workers who quizzed Harold daily on mathematics questions?

“He’s a PhD student of literature, Liam Payne. He’s not part of the narrative,” Harold explains. “He’s the one who found you.”

A bell practically dings in Zayn’s brain. “He wrote a paper on my book and sent it to me.”

“Yes.”

“It was good,” Zayn admits.

“I’ll tell him. He’ll be happy to hear that.” Harold chances a smile again.

So Zayn laughs again. Here he is, having the most pleasant conversation with someone he had thought only existed in his brain but ten minutes ago. And he’s come to beg for his life.

“You haven’t… written it, have you?” Harold says, pulling at his bottom lip nervously.

“The, uh, the,” Zayn says, flapping his hand.

“Yeah.”

Zayn turns his eyes to the steno pad on his desk briefly and sees that Harold has too.

“Oh, god,” Harold says, his voice cracking.

“Just an outline,” Zayn rushes to assure him, but he isn’t certain that helps anything.

“Right,” Harold says thickly.

“It’s. Do you want to read it?” Zayn says and he feels like an idiot.

He likes his ending, it’s a good ending. It’s the right decision, it’s the path that he’s laid out for Harold Styles. This is his fate and the rest of it is no good if the course doesn’t hold true. The purpose would be completely lost without the ending.

“Not really,” Harold says honestly.

Zayn tears off the pages of the steno pad anyway, lumping it underneath the printed manuscript on his desk, the messy manuscript full of Zayn’s notes and Perrie’s notes and haphazardly written suggestions for dialogue and plot hole solutions. It’s Zayn’s entire last month of his life in his hands, and it’s Harold’s entire life as well, it seems.

Zayn holds it out for Harold, not necessarily eager to approach him or touch him or do anything to prove he’s real. Harold accepts the stack of paper somewhat reluctantly and keeps a vice grip on it. Harold nods, staring down at the pages. 

Zayn wants to say something, something that makes sense, something that makes this better. Harold wants to say something as well, Zayn knows because he knows Harold. He knows him inside and out and he knows this is wrecking Harold. Harry. Harold.

Instead they stand there in a dumb silence, staring at each other like their whole lives have been leading up to this moment. And maybe they have and maybe this is it for them. And all they know how to do is nothing.

\--

Harry dodges Liam’s calls in favor of hiding out at the bakery. Louis’ helping a customer at the counter when Harry flops down face first onto his favorite couch, the loose manuscript caught between his body and the cushion. When Louis runs a hand down Harry’s back, Harry pushes his head up to allow him to sit before putting his head onto his legs, facing away from him.

“Missed you yesterday. And today,” Louis says lightly enough, but Harry senses he is worried.

Everyone’s worried with him. Niall, for spending so much time away. Liam, for ignoring him after the biggest break in their investigation of sorts. Louis, for Harry looking like he’s about to lose his mind. And now Zayn Malik, for having the potential to absolutely ruin his story.

“Sorry,” he tells Louis’ knees.

“Niall said you were with Liam.”

“Yeah, we had kind of an emergency.”

“A literary and customs and revenue emergency?” Louis says with humor.

“Something like that.”

“Hey.” Louis tugs at his shoulder lightly until Harry flips over, crinkling the pages still trapped underneath, and looks up at him. “Hey. Vaguermeister.” Harry snorts in spite of himself and Louis smirks. “Ah, there he is. Are you doing all right?”

“Yeah,” Harry lies and Louis purses his lips, unconvinced.

“Okay,” he says, extricating himself from the sofa. He returns with a red velvet cupcake and settles back into his spot. He peels off part of the cupcake and holds it over Harry’s mouth until he opens it.

Harry chews thoughtfully and tries to bottle himself up. He finds himself so absolutely _finished_ with doing nothing. There’s too much pressure and he’s going to explode.

“These three weeks have been a literal nightmare,” Harry says after he’s been fed half of the cupcake.

Louis pops a piece of the cupcake into his own mouth and waits.

“It’s frustrating because it’s also the best month of my life,” Harry continues. “I didn’t… I didn’t know I was in a tragedy. That just sort of came as a shock to me, that my life was a tragedy. I was alone, I guess, but I didn’t think anything of it. I didn’t think I was lonely until I wasn’t lonely anymore. Because then I had you and Niall and Liam. Everything just kind of became so much better. I felt like I was part of something greater than myself for having connected with you, and I don’t know that I’ve felt that before. And, I mean, it wasn’t for lack of trying. I tried hard to know people without success, I tried for so long until it wasn’t worth it anymore, until it hurt too much.”

Louis tangles their fingers together and it feels like support to Harry. Harry closes his eyes, blocking out the patient face looking down at him because he’s too much. The words pour out of him and he knows he doesn’t make sense and he doesn’t care. Everything in his brain dumps out into this moment, into the person he trusts the most, even if he knows the least.

“I thought I was doing everything right. I thought I was making the responsible decisions, doing what was expected of me, what everyone said I should do. And I was happy not being a singer or spending every pound I had to see Los Angeles or Tokyo or just taking what I wanted instead of only what I needed. But then I decided to stop thinking like that, that I _should_ start getting the things I wanted, even if it was impractical or reckless or pointless. And all of that focus I’d put on doing what I thought was the right thing didn’t matter anymore and I can’t stop wondering if I’ve wasted my whole life until right now.

“Everything in these three weeks have moved at lightning speed, work and new friends and you. I mean, god, I liked you so fast and so much. It’s all so _fast_ , but it feels right, if that makes sense. I’m so comfortable with you and I’ve never really felt that comfortable before. But I just worry, is this because of the story? I know I’m in a tragedy and the other shoe is going to drop and it’s going to be torture and no matter how much I wish for it and no matter how much I push for it, this is always going to be a tragedy. I’m told I’m falling in love with you, but that’s insane, it’s been a _week_ , nine days tops. But I don’t want us to be a tragedy and I don’t want us manufactured by the bloody narrative. I want it to be real. I want us to be real so much it hurts.”

Harry puts the heels of his palms to his eyes in a useless attempt to stave off tears. He feels drained, he feels desperate.

“I’m sure none of that made sense,” Harry mumbles. He feels Louis tracing a finger lightly around his face and he softens to the touch.

“It really didn’t, it was really rather scary,” Louis says quietly. He taps Harry on the forehead until Harry finally looks at him. He sees clear blue eyes and confusion but no judgment. “I’m not entirely sure what’s going on with you, Harry, but it sure seems like it’s drowning you.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s what it feels like.”

“But I think you’re trying to fight back and that gives me hope. I think you’re one of the good guys.” He gives Harry his favorite soft smile and Harry melts under the pressure of it. “One of the things I like about you the most is how much you like to help. It’s a simple thing, helping, and it’s effortless for you, isn’t it? It’s not a thing you even think about, you just do it. You project all of this earnestness to the world, but you don’t expect anyone to give it back to you. And I think maybe you won’t let them.”

“Niall’s said something like that,” Harry admits.

“I know,” Louis says and Harry is surprised. “I don’t know what’s happened to you or what you’ve done to make you think that you’re living out a tragedy, I think that’s what you said. I wish I could do something to keep you from thinking that. That there’s nothing left for you but a tragedy, whatever that means to you. But if you need help, and it really seems like you do, you’ve got us. You’re never on your own.”

In spite of everything, Harry doesn’t think this is going to help. He cries on Louis’ jeans and allows himself to be comforted and drawn up into Louis’ arms.

“Feels real enough to me,” Louis says quietly, putting his forehead to Harry’s.

“Take me home?” Harry asks and Louis doesn’t have to be asked twice.

Saturday morning, Harry is woken first by Louis’ temple kisses at an unreasonable hour—Eleanor had asked for the day off—and second by his phone at a more reasonable hour. His landlord calls to let him know his flat is all fixed up and livable again. Harry isn’t sure he wants to go back.

He stares at the slightly wrinkled mess of a manuscript sitting unread on Louis’ bedside table. The manuscript stares back. Harry loses.

He dresses quickly and takes the first bus he finds, caring little for destination. He wants the music of the city and the commute and life. The simple things the narrator tells him he enjoys the most.

The novel is an easy read, mostly because Harry’s lived it. It takes him hours, all day really, and he rides an infinite number of loops on the same bus and the driver never forces him to leave. His eyes are glued to the pages, the story of his life essentially, finding all of the pieces fit together in a way he didn’t notice along the way.

The yellow steno pad pages are frustratingly vague, but clear enough that Harry knows what he has to do. He stares at the scrawl, the words that dictate his destiny. It’s so simple it doesn’t seem like destiny. Destiny feels too big.

In the end, Harry knows what he has to do.

He exits the bus and stretches his sore limbs before setting out to accomplish every task set on the to-do list he marked on one of the pages.

He has a cashier’s check written up. He buys a pair of speakers, a soundboard, and a microphone and sets them for delivery later this week. He shops for good food and crisps and beer. He goes home finally, to his home that doesn’t feel like a home anymore.

The wall is a wall again. Harry is alone again. He puts the groceries away, changes his clothes, sets the manuscript on his kitchen table, and leaves his empty home for a fuller one.

From Louis’ flat that night, he calls Niall.

“Niall, you are hereby cordially invited to an informal gathering at my newly hole-less flat tomorrow at precisely 14.00. If you are late, you must find and wear your most hideous Christmas jumper, even as out of season as it is. What do you say?”

“Fuck yeah, mate, I miss your fucking ugly face!”

“Excellent. See you tomorrow.”

He calls Liam next.

“Liam, you are hereby cordially invited to an informal gathering at my newly hole-less flat tomorrow at precisely 14.00. If you are late, you must find and wear your most hideous Christmas jumper, even as out of season as it is. What do you say?”

“Harry, why the fuck haven’t you been answering my calls? If it wasn’t for Louis, I’d have thought you were _dead_. I’m so angry right now I might actually kill you myself. How’s that for a plot twist.”

“That’s rather insensitive.”

“Sorry. But not really.”

“Liam, are you coming to my party?”

“Of course I am, you absolute idiot.”

“Excellent. See you tomorrow.”

He asks Louis.

“Louis, you are hereby cordially invited to an informal gathering at my recently hole-less flat tomorrow at precisely 14.00. If you are late, you must find and wear your most hideous Christmas jumper, even as out of season as it is. What do you say?”

Louis kisses him.

“Just checking, it’s a yes on the party?”

Louis kisses him again.

Harry thinks maybe it’s a little morbid to throw himself his own going away party. Well, it’s a lot morbid. But he wants it, so he’s taking it. He’s holding the narrative hostage for one last day.

\--

Louis brings cupcakes, Niall brings his guitar, Liam brings his Wii, and Harry brings his can-do attitude. Everything goes about as well as it could. Liam sends his usual furtive glances at Harry over the heads of Niall and Louis playing Mario Kart with unparalleled competitiveness on the small television Harry has moved from his bedroom into his living room.

“Take it! Take it!” Louis shouts, unleashing fury on Niall’s Donkey Kong.

“Ah, fuck off!” Niall shouts back, his controls waving dangerously, constantly threatening accidental physical violence.

And they are all complete adults about it. Harry takes a few turns as Princess Peach, but finds he prefers to watch, Louis especially, who furrows his brows and chews on his bottom lip in concentration. In victory, his face is bright, eyes wide, and he shouts incessantly. Harry has no choice but to pull him in for a victory kiss, which turns into a victory snog. Louis tosses the controller at an unsuspecting Liam, who is struck right in the face.

“Oi, what the hell,” Liam snaps.

“Watch your tone there, Liam,” Louis says sharply before returning his focus to Harry. Liam looks irritated, Niall barks the loudest laugh, Louis and Harry are attached, and everything is as it should be.

Liam is still scowling when he and Niall go head to head.

“Liam needs a win,” Harry says in Louis’ ear.

“He deserves no pity,” Louis says and Harry fixes him with a glare. “Fine.”

“Hey Niall,” Harry says calmly. “Niall. Niall. Niall.” Niall looks undisturbed. “Niall. Niall. Niall. Hey Niall. Nialler.”

Niall falls off the track and Liam wins by a landslide.

“What the fuck, Harry, I was _winning_ ,” Niall seethes.

“Yeah, and denial isn’t just your name with a D in front of it,” Harry says seriously.

“You’re the worst person to ever walk the planet,” Niall deadpans. He deftly tackles Harry over Louis’ lap, which turns into a disastrous amount of play fighting and ends with Niall guffawing on the floor so hard his face turns red.

Liam continues to look unimpressed. “Your friends are weird.”

“Includes you, mate,” Harry answers.

Liam shakes his head. “I can’t. I can’t do this.” He tosses the controller onto the food laden coffee table ahead of him before rising.

“Where you going?” Niall calls as Harry disentangles himself from Louis to walk after him.

“To beat the shit out of Zayn Malik,” Liam says before Harry catches his arm.

“Who’s Zayn Malik?” Harry hears Niall ask, but he ignores him and pulls Liam by the arm into his bedroom.

Liam rounds on him immediately and fumes, “Honestly, H, I don’t think I can just sit here and pretend like everything’s okay when it’s _not_. And I don’t know how you’re doing it, how you’re just laughing and playing around like the entire fucking world isn’t falling apart around you.” He crosses his arms with a pointed glare. “Also you won’t tell me what happened on Friday, you’ve been ignoring me, and that really hurts my feelings.” He settles into a pout, which is probably intended to look serious, but Harry only finds it ridiculous.

With a sigh, Harry pulls the manuscript from his bedside drawer and hands it to Liam, who accepts it with a look on his face like he’s seen a ghost. Or like he’s just found out his friend is a fictional character.

“It’s real,” he chants, pulling it from the envelope Harry’s placed it in and scanning through the pages. “It’s real. It’s real.”

Harry frowns at him. “Of course it’s real. We’ve been talking about it like it’s real for weeks.”

“Yeah, but I always thought there was a possibility…” Liam waves his hand vaguely

“I was delusional?”

“Well. Yeah.” He flips back to the steno pad pages.

“Don’t read it, please,” Harry says, taking the pages back, returning them to their envelope, and stuffing it into the drawer once more.

“Why not?” Liam challenges.

“Because then you’ll do something about it.”

“You’re damn right I’ll do something about it. I’ll follow you around every second of every day if it means that prick can’t get to you. That’s just something Louis’ going to have to live with.”

Harry almost collapses under the weight of Liam’s support. It’s a far cry from the analysis he usually receives. On that first day, Liam had been so blunt and unfeeling, throwing out phrases like, “When are you set to die?” and slowly crushing Harry’s soul.

They have grown closer, Harry has felt it, and he only now felt confirmation that Liam felt the same way. They have made friends with each other and neither boy seems to know what to do with it. Harry because it didn’t feel as natural as his easy relationship with Niall, and Liam… probably because he’s too busy finding everything too surreal to process.

“Please don’t,” Harry says softly.

Liam blinks at him. “You’re going to let him _kill you_?”

“I don’t think of it that way.”

“I’m struggling to find another alternative way of thinking about it,” Liam says testily.

“We’re all going to die,” Harry says and Liam makes a face. “I know. Clichéd but true. And it’s probably not going to be better than this. It’s not going to mean more than what he’s given me. I really truly believe this is what I have to do. I’m okay with it and I need you to be okay with it. It’s my choice. And I think it’s the right one.”

Liam looks up and away in a move Harry recognizes as the universal Refusing to Cry face. He gathers Liam up into a hug, one slightly less awkward than their last attempt.

“Surely you of all people understand the importance of poetic justice,” Harry says. Liam responds with a short, wet chuckle. “S’not a tragedy, Liam. It’s sad, sure. But we’ve changed it. Not a tragedy anymore.”

“Okay,” Liam says quietly. He pulls away and wipes at his face. “You’re an idiot.”

“I know.”

“Just give me a minute,” he replies, waving Harry off.

Harry enters the living room to two curious pairs of eyes, Louis still stretched out on the couch, Niall seated more comfortably on the floor. “Liam is an exceptional snog.”

“That’s actually not even a little funny,” Louis says.

“You don’t own me,” Harry says as he falls dramatically onto the couch after Louis moves to make room for him.

“Yeah, but he’s got joint custody, innit?” Niall laughs.

“Too right,” Louis says, stuffing his face into the nightmare of curls on Harry’s head. Louis’ had him figured from the start, Harry knows. There was a moment where Louis just assumed control of the situation, he owned Harry, and there was honestly nothing Harry cared to do about it. “I’m all yours, though,” Louis adds, too quiet for Niall to hear. Harry smiles because he was already pretty certain of that.

Liam returns to the living room with hesitance, dropping into his recliner and saying nothing. Niall scrambles up from the floor and sits directly on Liam’s lap. He gives Liam’s face a very serious but light stroke with his hand.

“I just met you a week ago,” Liam says, looking up at him with surprise.

“Ours was a furious whirlwind romance,” Niall says before smacking a kiss to his cheek and returning to his previous spot on Harry’s couch. Liam flushes a little but smiles and it feels okay.

These are his boys, Harry thinks. They’re what he deserves to have before he goes. He knows in the great conundrum of loving and losing versus not loving at all, he would much rather have lost them. It’s selfish, he knows, because when he’s gone, he doesn’t have to pick up the pieces. And when it comes to making the decision about loving and losing, it shouldn’t be up to him. It should be up to those he’s leaving behind.

He doesn’t know if it’s selfish not to ask their opinion on the matter. It probably is. But Harry is taking what he wants.

He loves each of them for their own special reasons. Liam for his loyalty and Niall for his effortless kindness and Louis for his own love and brilliance and vulnerability and stubbornness.

“Where’d you go, love?” Louis asks.

“Hmm?” Harry feels caught. “I’m listening.”

“Oh, I see it, there it is,” Niall says, pointing and laughing, which is just rude.

“See what?” Harry asks.

“Doe-eyed Styles,” Louis says.

“I do not have doe eyes,” Harry says petulantly, narrowing his eyes just to prove a point.

“You do, when you’re flustered or mad, you kind of widen your eyes, sort of like this.” Louis attempts to widen his eyes, but he looks like an idiot, if anyone is asking Harry, which they aren’t.

“No, mate, it’s more like,” Niall adds before doing his own version, adding some ridiculous eyebrow waggling to the mix.

Liam shakes his head and for a brief moment, Harry thinks he has an ally. “I’ve got it.” He throws in his best Harry impression.

“Payno’s got it,” Louis agrees.

“You are all the worst,” Harry grumbles. “Is that what you were doing, making fun of me?”

“So you weren’t listening.”

“I was! But Niall is looking a little confused, so maybe you should recap for his sake.”

“I asked how you two got into working at the HMRC,” Liam supplies.

“Oh. Recruiter came to my uni. I had a double first in finance and maths and it seemed like the best choice. I could serve queen and country and get excellent dental,” Harry explains.

Liam makes a considering hum. “What’s with all the music talk, then?”

“There was a solid two years in my youth when I fancied myself a rock star,” Harry answers, sharing a smile with Niall. “Didn’t pan out.”

“I knew some people. This job is just a stopover for me, I think,” Niall adds.

“Is this a stopover for you, Harry?” Louis asks.

Harry doesn’t miss the look from Liam and says, “Probably.”

“Makes sense. No one grows up thinking _I want to be a tax man so I can ruin people’s lives_ ,” Louis says.

Harry frowns. “I don’t ruin people’s lives. If I come to audit you, you’ve broken the law. That doesn’t make me the bad guy.”

“You think I’ve done something wrong?” Louis says, not quite angry but possibly getting there.

“Of course. You have to pay taxes. That’s the law, whether you agree with it or not.”

“It’s a statement of conscientious objection to the misuse of revenue by Parliament.”

“You could write a letter in objection, that’s only slightly less illegal.”

Louis purses his lips impatiently. “I _did_ write a letter, and look where it got me.”

“It got you me,” Harry says with some measure of smugness.

“Well. Then I guess it wasn’t entirely useless,” Louis answers and gives him a light kiss.

“This is a strange mating ritual,” Niall remarks, looking between the two of them with a grin.

“It did go from heated to sappy in what I’m sure is record timing,” Liam agrees.

Louis flips them off and Harry catches Louis’ face between his hands. “I admire your rebellious spirit in the name of righting wrongs and saving the people, I really do, but I also really need you to not be in jail,” Harry says, softening his own blow with a kiss. “Promise me you’ll stay out of jail.”

“I will do no such thing.”

“If you subtract the value of the food you donate to shelters, it far exceeds the 26.53% you’re withholding and you wouldn’t be breaking any tax laws.”

“Harold. The whole idea is to break tax laws. Did you learn nothing Wednesday?”

“But. Jail,” Harry says and Louis laughs and Harry isn’t sure he’s won.

They share three more rounds of Mario Kart before settling in to eat while talking over the fourth season of _Friends_ , one of Harry’s few surviving DVDs. Harry reaches over and plucks a crisp from Liam’s plate just to watch him sputter.

“You’re a menace,” Liam censures and Harry smiles sweetly. “You’ve got an entire table of food.”

Louis scowls at Liam, pushing his plate toward Harry. “You can have some of mine, love. I don’t mind. Sharing is caring.”

Harry pulls a crisp from Louis’ plate and plops it in his mouth, his eyes never leaving Liam’s. Harry is absolutely certain Louis feels nothing but pride for him in this moment of terrorizing Liam. Liam gives his biggest eye roll to date and Harry snorts with laughter. He chances a casual glance at Niall, who hugs his plate to his chest.

“Not a fucking chance, mate,” Niall says.

Harry smiles harder, if that’s possible, and he wonders if maybe he would be allowed to stay in this moment. He knows it isn’t possible and he knows he’s made up his mind and he knows he shouldn’t be selfish about it. He tries his best to soak up the happiness and the ease in the room while he can. And he resigns himself to stop being nostalgic for things he’s never had but always wanted for the rest of the night. It’s nobody’s fault but his own that he’s losing everything.

In their post-food haze, Niall finally pulls out his guitar. He runs through a bunch of ridiculous vocal warmups and lip trills that has them in stitches. He works out a few light melodies before Liam has him taking requests.

“If you told me a month ago that my life would devolve to sitting on a couch, listening to a douchebag strum a guitar, I’d have not believed you,” Louis tells Harry quietly as Niall plucks out the opening to Justin Timberlake’s _Cry Me a River._

“He’s not a douchebag,” Harry pouts.

“Tank top, snapback, brings an acoustic guitar to a party. Douchebag uniform. He’s lucky he’s charming.”

“That’s dangerously narrow-minded,” Harry says haughtily. “I think maybe you need to broaden your horizons a little. We can’t all be the Stone Roses.”

“Ooh, someone knows how to Google,” he mocks.

“I’ve been on your computer. I’ve looked at your playlists. Don’t think I won’t tell everyone how you have every song Take That has ever released.”

Louis chuckles and placates, “Yeah, okay. You win.”

 “Was this a good day?” Harry asks.

“Mmhm,” Louis says with eyes on Liam as he unleashes some falsetto. “And you, Harold?”

“It was an excellent day.”

“Good. You deserve an excellent day. Maybe even several.”

Operation Harry Takes What He Wants is still in full effect.

“I think I like you,” Harry says simply.

“I’m overwhelmed, really, Harold, you just can’t drop that on a guy. I like you? Too much too soon,” says Louis with the appropriate amount of mock scandal.

“No takesies backsies.”

Harry can’t see, but he’s pretty sure Louis is rolling his eyes. “Takesies backsies,” Louis repeats. “Unbelievable.” He shakes his head. “I like you too.”

Harry traces small designs on Louis’ thigh as he hums low harmonies for a while.

“A cappella man!” Niall cheers, setting down his guitar at the end of the song. “That was the craic!”

“It sounds better with the other three guys. Sometimes we do a mashup with the old standard _Cry Me a River_ ,” Liam answers with pride masquerading as modesty.

“You have to join me and Harry’s band.”

“Are you in a band?” Liam says with surprise, probably thinking Harry has told him everything there is to know about him. At this point, Harry probably has.

“Not yet,” Harry says. “But he’s already planning tour dates.”

“I know a local open mic night I could get you into,” Louis suggests, poking Harry in the side.

“Oh good,” he says with giggles. “Then we’re settled. Band it is.”

“What are we going to wear?” Niall asks, ever useless.

“What are we going to sing?” Liam adds, ever practical.

“What are you even called?” Louis adds.

They laugh and trade songs and play games and settle on calling themselves Niall and the Potatoes. Harry documents the night obsessively with his phone’s camera for no real reason.

Niall leaves first around 20.00. Harry follows him to the door and pulls him into a warm hug. Niall squeezes hard before letting go.

“Thanks for having me over. Good party and all.”

“You’re welcome. Thanks for coming,” Harry answers before hesitating because there’s entirely too much to say and he knows he can’t chicken out. “And for, er, everything. I suppose. For your couch. For not letting me disappear into the background anymore. It was very kind.”

“It was nothing,” Niall says with a smile and a shrug. Harry thinks he probably doesn’t think anything of it. Niall exists in a world where navigating human relationships is simple because he wants it to be. Free of expectation, Harry remembers identifying it.

“It was something to me,” Harry says, eyes on his feet. “Can I ask you a favor?”

“Anything.”

Harry grabs the envelope from the kitchen table and hands it to him. “Will you see to it that this gets processed?”

“What is it?” Niall asks, peeking into the envelope anyway. Harry doesn’t explain because Niall’s surprised frown says he understands plenty. “Does he know?”

“No. And I’d like it to stay that way.”

“I won’t lie to him if he asks me.”

“I won’t ask you to.”

Niall claps Harry on the shoulder. “I know you’ve got your boy, but don’t be a stranger?”

“I won’t,” Harry promises.

“All right. Love you, bro,” he says and leaves.

Louis has to kick Liam out twenty minutes later when it looks like Liam’s planning on staying forever, despite his earlier agreement to respect Harry’s decision.

“If you stay, I can’t be held responsible for the things you hear. Or see.”

“Fine, fine,” Liam grumbles, unhooking his Wii and packing it hastily in his bag.

“Wait by the door,” Harry instructs him. Liam raises an eyebrow but walks to the door as Harry moves into his bedroom. He joins Liam at the door and slides the manuscript into his bag. “Will you give this to Will Malik tonight?” Liam looks like he’s about to say no. “Please, Liam, if you hold any sort of regard for me, you’ll just take this to Zayn and you won’t read it and you won’t say anything. I trust you. Please trust me.”

Liam doesn’t say anything for a while. When he finally speaks, his voice is laced with venom that wasn’t around for their last talk. “I still want to be on the record as saying this is the worst decision in the history of all decisions everywhere.”

“Your dissent is noted,” Harry says seriously.

“How can you do this? How can you just leave us all behind? How is that fair?” Liam challenges, the anger practically vibrating off of him.

Harry feels his eyes burn and finds himself unable to look at him. “It’s not that simple,” he mumbles to the floor.

“It’s pretty simple from where I’m standing, Harry,” Liam barks and Harry shushes him, casting a glance back toward the living room. Liam looks like he’s going to lose it, but drops his volume anyway. “And nobody’s going to congratulate you on being a martyr. I don’t think you know exactly what you’re doing, what this is going to mean. I don’t want to be a part of this, but I’ll do what you ask. Far be it from me to deny a dying man’s last wish.” Liam wrenches the door open and slams it behind him.

Harry doesn’t snap out of his shock until Louis calls from the living room, “What was that?”

He wipes at his face until he’s sure he’s presentable enough to casually wander back into the living room. “Hey,” he says, standing over Louis where he’s stretched out onto the whole of the couch. He runs his eyes over everything, taking in every last detail, as if he’d missed anything before.

“Hey yourself,” Louis replies. “What are you doing?”

“Openly objectifying you, now that it’s allowed.”

“Oh, well, in that case. You’re not so bad yourself. Good lad, nice little body.”

They trade smiles and Harry thinks they’re lucky to have had this. He’s a good looking lad, sure enough, all manner of attractive. But Harry also gets to have his smile and his wit and the way he covers his mouth when he laughs and his fond eye rolling and his concerned eyes and his cupcakes and his understanding and his warmth and his trust.

“You doing all right, Mr. Styles?” Louis asks because he always seems to know. Although maybe Harry is just transparent.

“Peachy keen, Mr. Tomlinson,” Harry lies. “Coming to bed?”

“Are you trying to distract me with sex?” Louis purses his lips impatiently.

“Yes. Is it going to work?”

“Unfortunately, yes. It will.”

Later, Louis drifts off between waking and sleeping and Harry squints down at the brilliant blue yarn he’s teasing around his knitting needles.

“S’a good bed,” Louis says, his voice slightly muffled by the pillow he’s stuffed his face into.

“Agreed.”

“Cuddle me, bitch,” he prompts, turning his face toward Harry.

“I have to finish this. Then cuddles.”

“Why is that giant blob of yarn more important than me?” Louis pouts, scrunching his face up comically.

“Because this _hat_ is for you, you dolt,” Harry says, patting Louis condescendingly on the top of his head. Louis huffs but lets him work. It’s another twenty minutes before he’s done, tying and cutting off the yarn thread and weaving it up into the hat to hide it. He taps Louis’ nose, and Louis dutifully lifts his head off the pillow. He makes no effort to help Harry as he pulls the hat onto Louis’ head.

It’s a good hat, Harry decides. Louis looks positively radiant in it, he also decides, the blue of the hat easily emphasizing the blue in his eyes even in this low light.

“Cute as a button,” Harry assesses.

Louis flops his head back down onto the pillow without removing the hat and mumbles what Harry is sure is very sincere gratitude for such a wonderful, thoughtful gift.

“Hey,” Harry says, pulling up Louis’ chin just a bit. Louis blinks at him. “I adore you.”

Louis gives him a soft smile and earnest, though sleepy, eyes. “I adore you.”

He’s asleep minutes later, buried into Harry’s shoulder with an arm flopped over Harry’s chest.

Harry is comfortable. He realizes just how important that is, comfort. He knows about home and he knows about comfort and he knows about happiness and he knows about friends. He’s learned things and he’s grateful. It’s more than he could have hoped for and it’s more than he could have anticipated. And he knows he’s the only one who was standing in his way. But he has taken what he wanted and he now he just feels grateful to the opportunity. He’s not even sure who he feels grateful to. Himself? Zayn Malik? The universe at large?

It doesn’t matter, ultimately. Here in this flat that was just recently filled with laughter and affection and enthusiasm, here in this room with a boy he kind of loves already. This is it for him, this is the pinnacle. And he’s okay, he tells himself that repeatedly, he practically chants it like a spell until he has no choice but to accept that it’s true. Because Liam is wrong. And Harry’s decision is right.

It’s okay. He’s okay. This is okay.

Monday morning, Louis wakes Harry up with his customary temple kisses, but today, Harry decides to reciprocate. He moves his face up to try to catch Louis before he crawls away and ends up clocking Louis in the nose with his forehead.

“Oops,” Harry mumbles with a giggle as Louis comically inspects his own nose for blood.

“Hi,” Louis says and pecks a light kiss on his lips. Harry chases him back for a far more satisfying kiss, one he wishes was never-ending, one that nearly devolves into something too serious for the obscenely early hour they’re both up. Louis pulls away and throws the duvet over Harry’s head with a laugh before climbing out of bed.

Harry wakes up again two hours later to the dependable _dee-dee-dee-deet_ of his wristwatch. He waits. He waits until he’s sure the voice is never going to come. Then it does.

_Harold woke up at 7.15._

“Good morning, Zayn Malik,” Harry says.

_He stopped his alarm, gave his face a good rubbing, and rolled out of bed to pee._

_If one had asked Harold Styles, he would have said that this Monday morning was exactly like all Mondays from the past six years._

_And it began the same way it always used to._

Harry brushes his teeth however he feels like and pops on a suit for the first time in weeks. For the first time in his life, it feels a little constricting. But there’s still some measure of comfort in the familiar, in routine.

He passes the living room on his way to gather up his morning banana and is surprised to find Liam passed out on the couch with a blanket draped over him. He spies a post-it note attached to the sleeping man’s forehead. He removes it carefully to find Louis’ haphazardly written note:

_Found this idiot asleep in the hallway outside the door. Mumbled something about Zayn Malik and apologizing when I dragged him in. Boy can’t seem to hold his liquor? See you later. xx_

Harry leaves the post-it note on the kitchen table and grabs his last banana and tells himself seven times before he leaves that he’s not allowed to cry today.

_Briefcase in one hand, banana in the other, Harold trotted down the stairs at his usual brisk pace. He passed the same neighbors he hadn’t seen in the weeks he had taken off work. He smiled at everyone, receiving either the customary baffled reactions or no reactions at all. He found himself arriving at the bus stop with plenty of time to go._

_Of all of the changes Harold had undergone in these last weeks—his very explicable increase of baked goods consumption, his complete lack of hair product, his sudden development of a social life, his resurging interest in rock and roll, his requited love life—of all of these changes, the most significant was Harold no longer arrived late for the 8.17 number 88 bus to Camden Town._

Harry takes deep breaths in and out. He’s calm. He’s resolute. He lets the narrator take control.

_Harold waited for the bus that had been consistently arriving one and a half minutes late. He thought of nothing more than the slow decline of public transit system until he saw the boy. Little did he know that the simple act of requesting the time those weeks ago when his wristwatch rioted, the simple act of being told the wrong time by one and a half minutes, and the simple act of shifting his life a minute and a half would thrust Harold toward his death._

_The young boy chased after the ball, which bounced dangerously into the street. The boy didn’t look both ways, as everyone is taught to do. Harold certainly always looked both ways, which is why Harold knew the bus was nearly there, but the driver wouldn’t have time to stop before collision. Without thinking, he knew what he had to do. He couldn’t not help._

_Harold flung himself into the street, arms outstretched. His hands connected with the boy, shoving him what he hoped was a safe distance away. The music of the scene filled his ears, terrible, discordant sounds most unlike what he was accustomed to. There was screaming and brakes screeching and last breaths exhaling._

_In the milliseconds before collision, Harold felt everything. He felt the impact of the bus and the impact of his life. He felt the love for those he was leaving behind. He felt their impact on him, as he hoped they felt his impact on them._

_Everybody falls back on the old idea of life flashing before the eyes of the soon to be departed. It’s supposed to be a comforting thought, perhaps, but it honestly seems to be a cruel reminder of what’s about to be rendered worthless by death. That was what Harold feared most in this moment, to be rendered worthless by death._

_Harold didn’t find his whole life flashing before his eyes. He found his priorities._

_It was about the things left behind, the people and the places. Leaving things better than you found them or leaving people better than you found them. He hoped he had done right by the people he loved, even if by leaving them, he was giving them scars. He knew he had carved out part of himself on each of the people he loved, which would make him feel selfish and conceited for admitting if he wasn’t so sure that they would have the same effect on him. He had spent so much time convincing himself that he was meaningless to everyone, but he had only made time now to convince himself that he was a person worth knowing and a person worth living with and a person worth remembering once they’re gone._

_He spared no second thoughts before jumping out into the street. He knew his own driving factor in life was to make the right decision. And to help. He knew it was only right that this boy, this stranger, honestly, was deserving of the rest of his life. That this boy could go on and leave things better than he found them and leave people better than he found them. That Harold was ultimately lucky enough to do these things and he couldn’t bear the thought of someone else losing this opportunity. Not when there was something he could do about it._

_In the end, Harold Styles felt everything until he felt nothing._

**\--**


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter! But...

Zayn’s fingers shake as he pulls the final page from the machine. He thinks he is going to be ill.

He pushes himself out of his chair and away from his desk as he dry heaves to no relief.

He turns to his stupid ironic typewriter and swipes it off the desk with a vengeance. It takes his manuscript with it, which falls to the floor in a dissatisfying _flump_ , not bothering to provide a beautiful, cinematic flurry of pages.

Zayn screams at it until he isn’t sure what he’s doing. He backs himself into a corner and slumps down to the floor. He curls up into himself.

“Zayn?” Perrie says cautiously and Zayn is not in the mood.

“Go away,” he says.

To her credit, she doesn’t move forward. “What’s wrong?”

“I killed Harry Styles,” he whispers, not wanting to put force to his words. Vocalizing makes it even more real.

“Okay.”

He looks up at her and then she approaches, kneeling next to him. “Did I make the right decision?”

“It’s a poetic ending. It fits the story.”

Zayn fumbles for his cigarettes in his pocket. He can’t get the lighter to flick on. Perrie gently takes the cigarette and light from him, lights the cigarette, and hands it back.

“It was the right decision for the story,” she confirms.

Zayn gives a humorless chuckle as he exhales the smoke. “Yeah, but was it the right decision for me? Or for Harry?”

“Harold.”

“Right. Harold. Fuck.” He barks a humorless laugh.

“Zayn, I’m not sure what’s wrong.”

Zayn sucks on his cigarette like it gives him life instead of death, although at this point, maybe he’s not asking it for life. He makes them sit there in silence for minutes. “How many people do you think I’ve killed?”

“What?”

“Thirteen people in my first book. Thirteen dead and six critically injured, that’s how I left them. I didn’t even tell the ones left over if they were going to be okay.”

“I’m sure they got to hospital fast enough,” Perrie humors with a deep frown.

Zayn waves his hand impatiently at her. “That’s not what I meant. There were six of them I left scarred and I didn’t even tell them they could be okay, that they could find their way out of the dark and away from the horror I put them through. Thirteen people who didn’t even have time to register what happened to them. Thirteen families grieving, thirteen families scarred for life. And Harry… I gave him everything and left him with nothing.”

“You haven’t left him with nothing. He made his choice,” she argues and Zayn scoffs. She didn’t know how right she was. “You gave him a good death. And those characters in your last book, they did what they had to do in order to advance the plot and fulfill their purpose of being created. Suffering isn’t pretty, sure, but it’s also not useless or pointless. And Harold? He died fulfilling his goddamn prime directive. You took a life, but you also saved one.”

“I didn’t have to endanger the boy in the first place,” Zayn retorts, but at this point he feels he’s just being stubborn.

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Zayn. Are we going to question the entire literary process? You’ve got themes and objectives to discuss, and your tools are fiction. It’s fiction. Harold isn’t real. I know you care about him. I do. Your readers will. And that’s why it’s so important to make the sacrifice. That’s why you build him up. So we feel something when you take him down.”

“I know,” Zayn mumbles in shame. Three weeks ago, he’d have made the same arguments. The story comes first and it’s practically part of the oath he took when he became an author, that he’d maintain integrity. That he would have the courage of his convictions.

But just this once, he thought maybe artistic integrity was a crock of shit.

“What is this? A crisis of confidence?” she asks.

He can’t tell her. She’ll think he’s insane. Well, more insane than usual. She saw Harry, but she didn’t _see_ him. And this’ll just be the cherry on top of the unhinged pie that his life has become.

He takes several breaths and stubs out his cigarette directly on the floor. “Yeah,” he mutters, pulling himself to his feet.

Perrie’s eyes are trained on the scattered pages. “Can I read it?”

“Can I just… have some time?” Zayn says, bending over to scoop up the manuscript.

“I’ll get us some coffee,” she says, scooting over to him. She places a light hand on his shoulder and he smarts a little from the touch. She only firms their connection and finds his eyes. “I’m going to be incredibly blunt right now because you’re you and I’m me and I believe you can handle it. Are you ready?”

Zayn nods.

“You are throwing yourself down a path to self-destruction and you’ve got to stop,” she says, not pulling any punches. “It’s not worth it, trust me. You seem to be under this belief that you should be punished or that you should have to be miserable in order to allow yourself to succeed. And that’s just not the truth. You can suffer, sure, like all people do. But you better not let it consume you. Not when you’ve got someone to remind you that you can find a way through the dark. Or at the very least, someone to walk through the dark with you.”

Zayn nods again, trying to imbue the action with confidence. Really anything to avoid her catching his face in her hands and telling him that he is never on his own.

“Thank you,” he says quietly. She shrugs at him and leaves.

He collects up his paper, working somewhat on autopilot until he finds Harry’s letter and thinks back to when it was delivered.

Zayn hadn’t been expecting visitors, honestly he never is, but certainly not at 9 at night. He opened the door to a young man, built broad and the brown eyes hidden behind large black frames were furious.

“Are you Zayn Malik?” he asked.

“Who’s asking?” Zayn returned, turning his best unimpressed face on the stranger.

“I’m Liam Payne.” Liam matched the look.

“Oh,” Zayn said, recognizing the name. He sees an envelope in his hands. “Oh.”

“Harry Styles has sent me,” he said, shoving the manuscript forward.

“Has he read it?” Zayn peeked in the envelope as if that would answer him.

“I’ve been instructed not to talk to you.” Liam remained standing at the door, even though it seemed like his business was concluded for the evening.

Zayn turned a confused look up to him. “Okay.”

“I’ve not read it, he wouldn’t let me,” Liam said stilted and Zayn waited for his point.

Liam looked at him like he was considering all of the great questions of life and existence and Zayn honestly was not in the mood for it.

“Okay, then. Thank you for bringing this,” he said with a level of politeness he was surprised he could achieve. He grabbed the door to close it, but Liam put a hand on it.

“I don’t know what you’ve got planned for him, but I can guarantee you he’s better than it. And he deserves more than it,” Liam said low and quick, like he was regretting the words as they were coming out. He turned directly on his heel and walked away, leaving Zayn feeling sort of paralyzed at his own front door.

Later last night, Zayn had found the courage to remove the manuscript from the envelope and had found the letter from Harry.

He reads it again now for the seventh time, flumping down on the floor.

 

_Zayn—_

_You wrote me something--in a way it was for me, at least--so I figured it was only polite to return the favor and write you something as well. I admit it won’t be good as what you’ve given me, but that’s just the way it is. You didn’t write me to be particularly eloquent, after all._

_That was a joke. Too soon?_

_I’ve read your book and I loved it. I’m still trying to figure out if that makes me sound a little conceited. I loved it and there’s only one way it can end. It ends with me dying. And I’m okay with that._

_I’ll leave all the sage literary wisdom to you and Liam, but from where I see it, it fits. It’s my fate._

_I know you’re the writer and all and you’re supposed to be in control. And I know I’ve spent my whole life thinking that I was in control. That the decisions I was making dictated how life was going, and that I alone was responsible for my happiness as well as my disappointments._

_It’s hard to think of life as nothing more complicated than a series of actions and consequences, spurring us all forward into paths without asking us what we want. It’s hard to imagine that we aren’t in control when it sure seems like we are. But I think some things are inevitable and inescapable. It’s not fair, but it is what it is. The easiest thing for us to do is accept it and move on._

_Anyway. I love your book and I think you should finish it._

_Harry_

_(Harold? Harry)_

 

Fuck it, Zayn thinks, so “Fuck it,” Zayn says.

He picks himself and the thankfully unbroken typewriter off the floor and flumps into his desk chair. He jams a sheet of paper into the typewriter, cranks it up, and starts clacking. He hopes against all odds this is going to do what he wants it to.

\--

Life blurs back into focus and everything feels like it is moving at a half speed. Harry thinks if the afterlife is a hospital room, he is going to be severely disappointed.

Harry blinks about seventeen times until a doctor comes into focus above him.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Styles,” she says cheerfully.

“Am I dead?” Harry says, or he tries to say, but it sounds quite like a croak.

“Nope.” She checks his charts and his vitals and confirms he is indeed not dead.

“Oh,” Harry says and he can’t help the slightly disappointed tone to his voice.

“Well, you’re very badly injured. And you _were_ technically dead for about a minute and a half. If that’s any consolation.”

It sort of is.

Harry’s eyes slide down, since his braced neck doesn’t appear to want to cooperate, and sees his left leg in a cast and his left wrist wrapped in gauze and his right arm in a sling. There’s probably a bandage over some part of his head. He knows he’s still a little loopy because he’s mostly worried for the safety of his curls. Because Louis likes them. Obviously.

“The boy?” Harry croaks again.

“He’s fine. Little shaken, little scratched. He’s going to be okay.”

“Good.” Harry nods and it hurts and he’s kind of worried. “Am I going to be okay?”

The doctor rattles off a long list of injuries that Harry has sustained and he wonders indeed how he’s still alive and breathing. She goes on about physical therapy for his leg and back and some scarring on his head and the unbelievable amount of bruising he has.

“Most miraculously of all, you severed an artery in your left arm upon impact, which would have caused you to bleed out if not for a small shard of your wristwatch, which had imbedded itself and stemmed the blood flow, causing your heart rate to slow. Unfortunately we couldn’t remove the shard without risking major muscle damage, so you’ll just have a watch piece imbedded in your arm for the rest of your life. Should only cause problems at the airport, but we’ll get you some paperwork for that.”

Harry is stuck a little on shards stuck in his body, processing everything much slower than he probably should. “Like Iron Man,” he says.

“Nothing about this is like Iron Man,” she says, holding out for him a cup of water with a straw.

“Okay,” he says and drains the entire cup. He glances down at his bandaged left wrist. His wristwatch put him in this mess, it seemed only fair the wristwatch should get him out of it.

“You’re very lucky to be alive, Mr. Styles.”

Harry agrees.

The door opens a little. Harry can’t see who it is, but he knows instantly.

“Is he awake?” Louis asks quietly.

“Louis,” Harry calls.

“Oh, thank god.” He sprints into view, looking like he hasn’t slept in days. “Harry,” he breathes, reaching out but not touching him.

“Hi,” Harry says intelligently.

“I’ll be back in 20 minutes. We need to do some tests,” the doctor says, seeming to fully understand exactly how much they need to be left alone right now.

“Can I touch him?” Louis asks, without taking his eyes off Harry.

“No,” the doctor says abruptly and leaves.

Louis just looks at Harry, all of Harry, and decides, “Yeah, fuck that.” He reaches out and gingerly presses his fingers to Harry’s lips. “Does that hurt?”

“Kiss me, you fool,” Harry demands and Louis complies with a soft kiss, gentle, not hesitant, and definitely not enough.

“Where does it hurt?” Louis asks, hopefully looking for another place to get his hands on him. If Harry thinks hard about it, every inch of him seems to hurt. But it’s very possible he’s on some really nice painkillers, so that combined with the sight of Louis’ stupidly beautiful face makes him feel all right.

Harry clears his throat and takes a deep breath because he really genuinely feels the need to speak more than four words at this moment. Because levity is important. He knows he’s speaking impossibly slow, and Louis, bless him, just waits. “Are we going to do that thing from _Indiana Jones_ where you kiss all of the places it hurts? Because as much as my doctor would recommend against that, I would like that. A lot.”

“You are unbelievable,” Louis answers, pursing his lips down at him and Harry just wants to kiss them again.

Every moment he’s reminded that he’s alive, he wants to kiss him again.

“They told me they were going to wake you up today, but I was so scared, Harry, don’t fucking do that again.”

“Once was enough for me as well,” Harry says honestly. He nods over to the pitcher of water and the cup. “Could you—”

“Yeah,” Louis says instantly, pouring him some water and holding the straw to his lips.

The cold water is incredibly soothing. Harry thinks water is pretty amazing and that he’ll never take it for granted again. After all, the earth is about 75% water, right? That’s probably right. Harry feels fuzzy on that number, but he doesn’t feel fuzzy about water being great.

“They told me you stepped in front of a bus,” Louis says, pulling Harry’s focus.

“I did do that,” he says in between swallows. “To save a little kid.”

“Why?”

“I had to,” Harry says simply.

Louis refills the cup twice before Harry feels his thirst is sated and he thanks Louis.

Louis just shakes his head. “I’ll take care of you. We all will.”

“We?” Harry asks.

“Yeah, me and your friends, you numpty.” He reads Harry’s _well, where are they_ expression. “Liam’s just left to teach a class. He’s probably crying on the bus. He’s actually been crying a lot, I’ve noticed,” Louis says, tilting an eyebrow up at Harry. “Anything I need to know about that?”

“Liam is just very in touch with his feelings lately,” Harry says, feeling not a little responsible.

“Niall’s at work, he’ll be by during his lunch break. He couldn’t take any more time off. Some bloke called Paul kind of had to drag him back to the office kicking and screaming.”

“What do you mean, more time off?”

“Oh. It’s Thursday,” Louis answers. “I’m sorry, I thought she might have said.”

Losing a chunk of time disorients Harry for some reason. He thought he was losing his life, but he’s only lost days, which should be comforting, considering. And then there’s the thought that he’s worried them for days, that Louis looks like he hasn’t gotten any sleep probably because he hasn’t, and Liam has been crying often enough in days past for Louis to worry about him.

“Let’s see. Things you’ve missed. Your meeting with the nans in Chiswick yesterday, that’s a real shame. You’ll have to make it up to them. Nans are particularly unforgiving.”

Harry is stunned for a moment that Louis even remembers Harry talking about that back when he hated him. Although, if Louis is anything like Harry, Harry remembers everything Louis says.

Louis pauses comically and taps at his chin as though he has to put lots of thought into it. “I am apparently no longer being audited by the HMRC because the amount withheld from my taxes was very mysteriously paid by an anonymous benefactor.”

“That sounds very mysterious indeed,” Harry agrees.

“On Wednesday, the strangest delivery came to the bakery. Somebody had ordered a full set up for what I would need to continue open mic night.”

“That is also very strange. But convenient now that you no longer have to get all of that equipment from Niall.”

Louis fixes him with a look that Harry can’t figure out. It doesn’t appear to be a bad one, like impatience or anger, but it doesn’t appear to be a good one, like appreciation or fondness. It’s just a look. Harry thinks he might melt straight through his hospital bed.

“You are an odd duck, Harry Styles,” he says, but it feels like that’s just hiding so much more. “Now is not the time because you’re poorly, but rest assured, later we are going to have a very long chat about your ill-advised savior complex.”

It kind of seems impossible, but in this moment Harry is pretty sure Louis knows everything. Louis sees right through him, always has.

Harry lightly curls his fingers around Louis’ left wrist where it rests on his bed, his hands easily encompassing the entirety of the two tattoos there. He runs his thumb lightly along Louis’ pulse to remind himself that he’s alive and Louis’ alive and hopefully everything is as it should be.

“I apologize if I worried you,” Harry says quietly.

“ _Worried you_ , understatement of the fucking century, Harold,” he answers, looking up and away and there it is again, it’s Louis’ version of the Refusing to Cry face. “If anything had happened to you…”

“I’m still here,” Harry says.

“Me too.” He turns a watery-eyed smile to Harry, who returns one.

He feels grounded. He feels whole. He feels home.

\--

Zayn waits outside the hall that contains the lecture hall of Liam Payne with an envelope in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He listens for the chimes from the bell tower to let him know how much time has passed. He didn’t put a lot of effort into figuring out much more information beyond what room to find Liam in. Certainly not any sort of useful information like what time the class let out or anything, so Zayn has been leaning against the wall and chain smoking for at least the last twenty-five minutes, hoping there isn’t more than one main entrance to this building where Liam could slip by unnoticed.

At least he looks cool. And _surely_ he’s cultivating an aura of mystery behind these sunglasses.

The thought makes him laugh a little to himself as the door to the hall swings open and students pour out. Minutes later, Liam comes through the same door, his hands full of books and his messenger bag empty of any contents, and Zayn feels a little sorry for him.

“Liam,” he calls, tossing his cigarette aside and walking after him.

Liam whirls around and fixes Zayn with a glare once he recognizes him. “What are you doing here? Haven’t you got people you need to throw in front of buses? Coma patients to suffocate?”

“That’s a bit dramatic,” Zayn deadpans.

Liam shrugs and walks on, and Zayn thinks maybe that response wasn’t the best approach to get Liam to stand and talk to him.

“I’ve rewritten the ending. If you have any interest in reading it,” Zayn calls, holding up the envelope.

Liam stops, turning around to eye him warily.

“He’s awake. Check your phone. I’m sure Louis’ texted by now.”

Liam checks his phone and judging by his face, Zayn thinks he’s right. “Awake for now?” he asks.

“For good,” Zayn affirms.

“That doesn’t make sense with the rest of your novel,” he says bluntly. “In fact, it destroys the integrity of all of your themes.”

“I’ll rewrite it,” Zayn says as if it’s nothing, when in fact it’s a _huge_ undertaking that’s going to send his publisher into some sort of coronary distress, most likely.

“What made you change your mind?”

“I just… couldn’t do it,” Zayn says with a shrug and Liam doesn’t look impressed.

“Because he’s real?”

“Because. It was a story about a person who’s about to die and doesn’t know about it. He changes everything about his life and even then it doesn’t make a difference. That’s the tragedy. But Harry? He changed the story. So if he knows he’s going to die and he does it anyway, isn’t that the kind of person you want to keep alive?”

Liam only nods and Zayn offers him the envelope again. Liam plucks it from his hand and walks away again. He doesn’t extend any sort of offer to follow, and Zayn doesn’t feel the need to watch him read it. He knows the ending, he’s practically committed it to memory at this point.

It goes something like this.

_There was something to be said for routines. For doing things that felt safe and familiar. For living life the same way every day because that’s what you’ve always done. So you figure that’s what you should always do._

_How liberating it must be then, to realize that life always holds infinite possibilities, an infinite amount of choices arising and actions occurring every second of every day that could change your life. Some things you can choose, like where you work or how you dress, and some things you can’t choose, like who you love or when you die._

_We believe in fate because it’s easy. We believe in fate to remove ourselves from the driver’s seat of our own lives, to forgive ourselves when things don’t go our way or to ignore the consequences when we make the wrong decisions._

_Harold never believed in fate, not really. He thought the idea of a lack of control in his life was terrifying. He made his decisions and he lived with both the good and the bad consequences because he considered himself the architect of his own life. However, just because you’re the one living your life doesn’t mean you’re the only one who gets to affect it. And Harold’s wristwatch and Harold’s parents and Harold’s friends and Harold’s coworkers all affected his decisions. They kept him on the right path, convinced him he was on the right path even when he was wrong._

_It would have been easy to believe that fate led him to be early for the bus that day and fate caused him to willingly sacrifice himself to save a stranger. But in that moment, Harold Styles knew exactly what he was doing. The choice was his. Everything that led up to that moment was the result of a complex series of decisions, impossible to calculate mathematical probabilities, and some truly unbelievable plot twists._

_For Harold, he found liberation in this decision that almost ended his life. The best laid plans meant nothing if they could be rendered pointless in the blink of an eye. Harold had to find something else to dedicate his time to for the rest of his life. He had tried to live by impossible standards that made up some imaginary parameters for a life well lived. He was responsible and bland and scared and alone and that’s what rendered everything pointless. He only found meaning in taking what he wanted._

_Harold would attempt to focus on the things that made life worth living. He would find comfort in the people he loved. He would look for ways to engage life to the fullest instead of passively acknowledging life’s existence. He would eat all the cupcakes he wanted._

_At the end of your life, it’s about the connections you’ve made and the people you’ve left behind. It’s about knowing you did your best with the time you’re given, however long or short. And every single thing in your life builds up. It amounts to something, even if that something isn’t tangible. All of those small, seemingly insignificant things like shared cupcakes and acoustic guitars and toothbrushes and tiny notebooks and bananas and wristwatches. All of those things exist to save our lives._

_It’s a strange sentiment, sure, but it also has the benefit of being true._

\----

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> .... it will have an epilogue because I like my stories to have as many endings as Return of the King did.  
>  If you read this story and liked it, thank you! If you read this story and liked it and talked to me about it, also thank you!


	8. Epilogue.

“Love, you are clumsy enough without a cane,” Louis says, immediately removing the tray of sweets from Harry’s hands with precision. “Stop trying to serve the customers.”

“I want to help,” Harry complains.

“Tough shit,” Louis barks. “Sit down.”

“You can’t be mad at me. I’m feeling poorly.”

“You’ve been feeling poorly for months. It’s time to resume the abuse.” Louis simply points at Harry’s favorite couch, which has been adorned with a reserved sign. Harry limps over and settles into it, throwing a look to him that says _are you happy now_? Louis answers with his own look that says _exceedingly happy_.

Or maybe Harry’s just imagining things. Either way, he sends him back the look that says _I love you_ , and Louis returns it with the simple crinkle-eyed grin that says _I love you too_.

The door opens and Zayn enters with the woman Harry remembers meeting at his studio but never caught her name. Harry waves them over and Zayn answers with a hesitant smile before leading her to Harry. Harry clambers up from the couch with some difficulty to shake Zayn’s hand.

“Zayn, thanks for coming,” Harry says. It had taken weeks and weeks of convincing to get Zayn to attend an open mic night. When his responses softened from _fuck no_ to _I don’t think I should_ , Harry knew he was destined to succeed.

Zayn’s hand is still in Harry’s but his eyes are focused on drinking in the bakery and all the people in it. Harry wonders if this is what it looked like in his head. Harry wonders if he looks like what Zayn thinks he does in his head. That throws him for a little bit of a loop.

“Zayn thanks you for the invitation,” his friend says with an embarrassed smile. “I’m Perrie. You look familiar.”

“I’m Harry.” He shifts a little to shake her hand as well. “It’s very nice to meet you.”

“Likewise.” Her eyes drift to the cane. “Are you all right?”

“Got hit by a bus. I do not recommend it,” Harry says with a smile. Perrie only has time to look a little shocked before Louis appears out of nowhere.

“Harry, who are your friends?” Louis says, surveying them critically and propping a hand on his hip. “I feel threatened by them. You should only pay attention to me.”

Zayn and Perrie’s eyes are glued to Louis and Harry is quite tickled. Everything about this is tickling him, in fact. He’s far beyond shocked and confused and overwhelmed, and he’s moved straight to tickled and amused and actually fairly comfortable.

“Perrie. Zayn Malik. Louis Tomlinson,” Harry answers for everyone, pointing in turn. He moves a hand around Louis’ waist to take some pressure off his cane hand and Louis leans in, subconsciously at this point, to provide more support.

“Zayn Malik, why do I know that name?” Louis asks, turning to Harry.

“He’s a writer,” Harry supplies cheerfully. “Niall’s about to start. Have a seat?”

Zayn and Perrie turn in unison to focus on Niall testing the microphone. Perrie’s face falls very slowly as things sort of begin to click in her head. Harry knows Zayn has asked his editors—out of fear of writing much else in the story himself—to change the names of his characters to protect their identities and such. But Harry read the first draft and he knows there’s no mistaking the characters in his life.

“You should probably sit down before you fall over,” Harry suggests helpfully, gesturing to his fancy sofa. Perrie sits immediately, tugging Zayn by the arm after her.

Zayn speaks for the first time in ages after Harry’s sat down with them. “This is so fucked up.”

“Surely it’s not all bad?” Harry muses and Zayn just turns to him with wide eyes.

“Good evening, everyone, you are all looking very nice tonight. How are you doing?” Niall says amiably into the microphone. The crowd woos and claps at him. “You are doing ‘woo’. That’s good. First, you’re going to hear a word from our sponsor, Louis, he’s the owner of this fine establishment. Louis, come here and speak to your people.”

Louis groans like he’s being inconvenienced and trudges his way over to the microphone. “Welcome, loyal subjects. My name is Louis, thank you for coming.” He pops a double thumbs up. “This is the, what, Niall, how many times have we done this?”

“Six times.”

“Wow, this is the sixth time we’ve done this. It’s nice to see some familiar faces and some hopefully soon to be familiar faces. Um. If you need anything, you can always grab me or that idiot over there,” Louis says, pointing at Liam where he stands at the counter, who flips him off in return. “Have fun and, um, yeah.”

He sort of flaps his hands and struts away from the microphone a few paces before he’s stopped by a customer.

“Eloquent as always, Louis, thank you so much,” Niall chirps, resuming control and shaking his head down at him. “We are starting off the night with Howard. C’mon up.”

Liam descends onto Harry, seemingly from nowhere, leaning over him with a hand on his shoulder and talking quietly into his ear. “You’ve brought him.”

“I did.”

“Harry, I think that—”

“It’s a bad idea?” Harry says, pulling a mocking face. Liam thumps him lightly on the side of his head and Harry growls, “I’ve been hit by a _bus_.”

“That was months back.”

“You need to stop hanging out with Louis,” Harry says, poking him firmly in the shoulder. “Why don’t you guys take me seriously? I’ve got a weapon attached to me now.” He waves his cane, nearly hitting Liam in the face. “And you also need to play nice.”

Liam looks over to where Zayn and Perrie appear to be in deep whispered conversation. Harry has a couple of ideas about the subject.

They never spent a lot of time discussing the absurdity of their situation, Zayn and Harry. But they didn’t think about how impossible it was, because that was the easiest way to cope. Harry didn’t tell him what it was like to fight with the narrator, to hate the narrator.

He didn’t question whether his feelings for Louis were real or manufactured, because things seem to be going well enough without Zayn’s intervention.

He doesn’t allow Zayn to apologize like he seems to want to. He figures the best way about it is to just accept it and move on.

“Hello, Zayn, it is nice to see you,” Liam interrupts, sounding like a small child being forced to greet a great uncle he doesn’t know.

Zayn cranes his neck around up to look at him, Perrie also looking up. “Yeah, I’m sure,” Zayn answers.

“Thank you for sending me the second draft. It’s not as good as the first one, but for obvious reasons, I’m glad you changed it,” Liam says, blunt as ever. Harry snorts a little.

“Yeah, I got your notes. They were very useful. Thank you,” Zayn says honestly and Liam’s coldness seems to melt a little. He shifts on his feet and hazards a small smile at him.

“He’s read the book?” Perrie asks with a dubious finger pointed at Liam.

“I’m Liam,” he says, moving to shake hands with Perrie. She introduces herself, looking like she’s trying to figure him out. Liam must notice this because he answers, “I’m not part of the narrative.”

“Don’t say that, Liam, of course you are,” Harry says, grabbing his hand. It feels like he says this to deny his own importance, but Harry won’t have that. Liam looks down at him with a soft frown for a moment before nodding and sauntering away.

“I, um. I didn’t know you based your characters on real people,” Harry hears Perrie quietly tell Zayn.

“Neither did I,” Zayn responds, somewhat cryptically to her ears.

The entire night either Liam or Louis find themselves orbiting around Harry, checking to make sure he’s doing okay or if he needs anything. It’s kind of driving Harry insane, feeling like he’s unable to help himself, but he doesn’t dare to say anything.

Niall and the Potatoes make their grand debut that evening, to thunderous applause. Harry feels the music flowing through him, filling him up, understanding him as he sings The Rolling Stones. He picks this song especially because he’s still working out the balance between getting what he wants and getting what he needs. Harry’s hands and wrists are not up to the task of playing his guitar quite yet, but between Niall on the guitar and Liam on the keyboard, they don’t sound half bad. The most exciting consequence is earning _you’re so good_ kisses from Louis, which are second only to _I really rather love you_ kisses.

Long after the customers are gone, Harry finds his three favorite people and his two new friends all seated comfortably in a makeshift circle of couches and armchairs. Liam sits next to Harry, but Louis finds a way to squeeze in between them—honestly, Liam should have known better at this point—once Louis finished sending off customers at the door. Niall has easily taken up Zayn and Perrie’s attention, telling them about the time he talked his way into being Prince Charles’ caddy for a day. Harry’s pretty sure Niall is full of it, but it all seems a little too real.

“All right there, Harold?” Louis asks.

“Better than all right, I’d say.”

“And your friends? They look like they’ve been ready to piss themselves since walking in.”

Sometimes Louis is very frustratingly perceptive. Harry tries to explain it away. “New place, new people, slightly overwhelming environment. I was probably going to pee myself the first time that I walked in here as well.”

“I probably would have taken pity on you if you had,” he says after taking a moment to think about it.

“That’s a lie.”

“Yes, it is.” Louis looks around at everyone. “Can I get you guys anything?”

“Red velvet cupcakes. They’re the best,” Harry decides without asking anyone. They should just take his word on that because Harry’s definitely eaten at least one of everything Louis’ ever made.

“Of course they’re the best. They’ve got me mum’s secret ingredient.”

“Red apple cider vinegar,” Zayn identifies before he realizes what he’s done. His eyebrows lift in surprise almost all the way up into his hairline. Harry wonders exactly how much Zayn knows about each of them through his own character development.

Louis stares hard at him. “How did you know that?”

Zayn fish mouths for too many seconds until Perrie rescues him, “Harry talks about you guys a lot. About everything. At length. You know how he gets.”

Harry trades a thankful glance at Perrie, who nods very tightly. She seems to be taking everything well, if she’s cottoned on like Harry thinks maybe she has.

“That we do,” Niall says with a nod.

Louis gets up and throws an exasperated look to Harry. “It’s not a secret ingredient if you tell everyone, Harold.”

“I’ve got a big mouth,” Harry says apologetically.

“That you do,” Louis answers suggestively, of course, prompting Liam to slap his head into his hands with a groan. Harry laughs as Louis gives Liam a rap on the head before disappearing behind the counter.

“What’s Harry said about us?” Niall asks, folding his feet up under him in his chair. “Only sickeningly sweet things, I’m sure, the bastard.”

“Of course. But no amount of description seems to do any of you justice. You’re all such full, complex charac—people,” Zayn corrects, throwing a glance to Harry, “and I don’t think I couldn’t have really imagined half of what you really are. You’re much brighter than I ever imagined, Niall,” Zayn finishes, almost in awe.

Harry likes this comparison. He remembers the only time Zayn had actually asked him about the rest of the story. Harry had been content to let Zayn live the rest of his life without bothering him, considering he had been so kind to save his life—Liam did not think of it that way, Liam was still very upset for months, and Harry loved him for it.

Harry hadn’t heard the narrator’s voice once since the day he woke up. The last time he heard him, it was very late that night and Harry was wide awake, making up for all of the sleep he’d gained over the last few days probably. Louis was asleep curled into a small chair in the corner after having refused to be removed by the hospital staff. Zayn’s voice came to him then, wrapping up loose ends and gave Harry his new mission—to pursue a life worth living, full of love and happiness and satisfaction.

He had cried himself to sleep and resigned himself to never hearing Zayn’s voice again.

But Zayn had dropped in on Harry out of the blue one day, standing on Harry’s doorstep looking like he was about to pass out. He claimed he just needed to make sure the changes his editors were making weren’t affecting Harry in any way. They weren’t, Harry didn’t feel anything different and he hadn’t heard anything.

He could tell that something was on Zayn’s mind, about a million things were probably on Zayn’s mind, so he sat patiently at his kitchen table, watching Zayn make them both a cup of tea. He apparently knew his way around Harry’s kitchen, and Harry wasn’t going to question it.

When Zayn sat down with the tea, he asked Harry a few questions—mainly to know exactly how much of it was real. Harry did his best to describe Louis and Niall, his coworkers, the open mic night, the date. He explained how Liam confused the narrative and Zayn looked generally very awestruck the entire time.

Harry had taken his visit as an open invitation for friendship, because at that point, that’s what Harry wanted. So he took it. And he wore Zayn down and now Zayn is seated in the middle of a bakery he thought he created, talking to people he thought he created, and living out what is surely the second craziest day of his life. The first probably being the day he and Harry met. Or maybe it was the other way around? Harry didn’t know. It’s probably rude to ask.

“But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? Tis the east, and Niall is the sun,” Louis croons from the kitchen, to which Niall flips him off.

“I am the motherfucking sun,” Niall says contentedly. “I accept.”

Louis returns with a tray full of red velvet cupcakes for everyone. “Zayn Malik the writer and Perrie, last name and occupation unknown, Harry has said literally nothing about the two of you. I’m sure you are properly offended,” he says as he distributes cupcakes like the glorious cupcake Santa he is.

“We’ve only just met a few months ago,” Harry explains, wrapping an arm around Louis’ waist as he settles back into the couch. He finds Louis still grounds him simply by touch.

“I introduced them,” Liam answers helpfully. “Zayn and I have conversed about his work before and when he said he wanted to write about a character who works for the HMRC, I set him up with Harry.”

Louis looks down at Harry for a moment, things working together in his brain. “Is he the source of your literary and revenue and customs emergencies?”

“Yep,” Harry says because, well, it’s true. He doesn’t miss the slightly worried looks Zayn and Liam give him.

“None of this makes sense,” Louis announces and for a moment Harry’s sure he’s caught. “Who’d want to read about people who work for the HMRC? What a bore.”

“Excuse you, I’m a delight,” Harry says and Louis plops a placating kiss on his nose.

“I’d read that book,” Liam says because he already has. He trades another smile with Zayn.

“I’m with Louis, there’s nothing interesting about files and numbers,” Niall adds. “Besides, if I was going to read a book, which, I mean, I’m probably not, but if I was going to, I’d want to, I dunno, escape my life. Something completely crazy and nowhere near reality.”

“Even the craziest stories should be grounded in truth, if they’re doing their jobs correctly,” Perrie says. “Even if a novel was about life with dogs in space, there’d still be some universality to what it means to be alive, isn’t there?”

“Yeah,” Harry agrees. “I liked being understood.”

He knows that even if he was the central character of the story, on some level people would understand what he was going through. They’d agree with him or disagree with him, but either way the audience would still find a way to connect with him. That’s what it’s like to be alive, as Perrie states, making connections and understanding each other. He’s connected to each of these five people in what is possibly the weirdest way in the world, but he thinks he understands them or is on the way to understanding them.

He makes connections to leave impressions on people. This is what Zayn’s given him: the knowledge that he affects people and that he’s in control of how he does so. Louis will be forever changed for having loved Harry. Niall will be forever changed for having provided Harry unconditional support. Liam will be forever changed for having found his way to empathy. Harry will be forever changed because Zayn gave him an impossible life and Harry took what he wanted.

Harry doesn’t regret anything, even if his life was ruined at the sudden appearance of an impossible narrator. Whatever the cause, it spurred him onto finding a life worth living. It spurred him onto love and friendship, acceptance and kindness. It led him to fulfillment, which was something Harry never knew he needed or was lacking.

He tries his best to navigate his new life, marrying it with his old one, making the right decisions, correcting the wrong decisions. He falls into his routine, but always finds ways to shake it up when he can. He gets what he wants _and_ what he needs. He doesn’t sit on his hands anymore, thinking about playing _Wouldn’t It Be Nice?_ with his life. Because he decides that indeed it _would_ be nice. So he just takes it.

Operation Harry Takes What He Wants is always in effect. And what he wants is this life.

\----

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! Have a lovely day.


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